Karl Blossfeldt: Highlights

Karl Blossfeldt’s close-up photographs of plants and seeds began as a teaching experiment, as he wanted to showcase the forms and patterns he found in the natural world which he believed should inspire his art students in Berlin. Blossfeldt was fascinated by the sculptural forms present in botany, and created a camera that could magnify his subjects up to thirty times their actual size to emphasize their abstract and beautiful structures. His photographs became influential beyond academic circles with the publication of two landmark books—Urformen der Kunst, (Archetypal Forms of Art), 1929 and Wundergarten der Natur, (The Wondergarden of Nature), 1932.