Karl Blossfeldt, the living archive
« German photographer and sculptor (1865-1932), inventor of a botanical photography of abstract beauty. »
A sculptor by training and teacher at Berlin's School of Decorative Arts, Karl Blossfeldt photographed plants for thirty years for his students: he wanted to show them that nature is an encyclopaedia of ornamental motifs. He built the cameras he needed for the close-ups himself.
Urformen der Kunst (1928), published late in life, revealed him to the public: 120 plants in close-up, neutral background, discreet backlight, enlargements up to thirty times. Stems, tendrils, pods, calyxes became abstract sculptures — wrought iron, columns, Art Deco motifs avant la lettre.
Adopted by the Surrealists, who saw in his inventory a manual of vegetal unconscious, Blossfeldt embodied the Neue Sachlichkeit, German New Objectivity of the 1920s. He died in 1932, shortly before the Nazi seizure of power. His influence runs from Bernd and Hilla Becher to all typological photography.