More Women in Trees: Climbing Up Again [Hardcover]

“What are they all doing up there?” wondered the Zürich Tagesanzeiger. It’s probably a forgotten popular sport,” suggested Der Spiegel. There was even speculation about the “secret sex life of trees.” One thing is certain: Jochen Raiss’s Women in Trees, published by Hatje Cantz in 2016, immediately became a bestseller. Perhaps it happened simply because the evident happiness felt by these women (who may have simply been in the mood to climb a tree) is palpable to us all.

Women in Treesmade us happy—and hungry for more. So Hatje Cantz asked the obsessive collector Raiss if he might have some more of “the goods,” and he did. He has, after all, spent 25 years searching for and finding anonymous masterpieces such as these, which is why we now have More Women in Trees: how can you possibly get enough of them?

...all these women, nearly a century ago, sitting in trees like the boys they never were are riveting.The very best are those where the knowledge that she is doing something mischievous is written all over the climber’s face. She is giddy with it. Who knows what became of these women? But I like to think that, even if they were fettered by propriety every other day of their lives, just this once, they felt free.