PHOTOGRAPHS
Blossfeldt, Karl
Germany (1865 - 1932)
Impatiens Glandulifera (Indian balsam)
1927, printed 1975
Gelatin silver print
10 1/4 x 8 in. (26 x 20.5 cm) image and sheet size; 17 x 12 3/4 in. (43 x 32.7 cm) mount board size
Joseph and Elaine Monsen Photography Collection
FA 2007.51

Karl Blossfeldt rarely thought of himself as a photographer, although that is the work for which he is now known. He began as a teacher at the School of the Royal Museum of Arts and Crafts in Berlin, Germany, and later became a full professor in sculpture. His goal in making his images was to show plant forms as the basis for applied art forms, and to awaken an interest and connection with nature. He believed “the plant must be valued as a totally artistic and architectural structure.” Blossfeldt made thousands of plant enlargements and details like this one, in an attempt to reveal its fundamental structure.

Karl Blossfeldt studied painting and sculpture, but his most important study was botany--collecting plant specimens with Professor Meurer in Italy, Greece, and North Africa. In 1899, he began to photograph plant specimens with a camera of his own making that could magnify a subject up to thirty times. He used these images in his teaching of sculpture. Throughout his career, Blossfeldt continued to travel, particularly in the Mediterranean, collecting the flowers, buds, and seeds of the region’s flora. In 1928 he published Urformen der Kunst (Art Forms in Nature), a portfolio of 120 photogravures, which quickly became a bestseller and made him famous almost overnight. -- Label copy for 150 Works of Art, October 1, 2005 to February 26, 2006.

Fascinated by the relationship of form to function in nature, Karl Blossfeldt strove to meticulously document the architectural details of plant forms through photography. His devotion to capturing detail and his technical innovations lead to great advancements in the photographic field. Using a homemade camera, Blossfeldt was able to magnify images up to thirty times their original size, allowing his work to take on an abstract quality never before achieved. Significantly, he also created slides for projecting his images rather than making prints from developed negatives. This allowed him to easily make compositional decisions during processing. Using scientific formatting and methodology, Blossfeldt created photographs that documented natural phenomena, but that also celebrated and promoted the aesthetic qualities to be found in structure and function. His work, produced in a time of photographic and cultural transition, remains timeless in its elegant and understated celebration of beauty in the natural world.

Karl Blossfeldt (1865-1932) was a German photographer, sculptor, and teacher who lived and worked in Berlin. Working as an instructor of sculpture, Blossfeldt used his photographs as educational tools in demonstrating the elements of design. In 1928 he published Urformen der Kunst, (“Archetypes of Art”), which became one of the seminal photographic books of the twentieth century. -- Label copy for Now Here is also Nowhere: Part I, October 27, 2012, to January 6, 2013.