Karl blossfeldt photographer biography samples

Back in the day, I used to supplement my income by being a “finder.” If a client wanted something related to art/furniture, I could find it.  I knew my fair share about art history/design and invariably I invariably “knew a guy” who could get his/her hands on a certain piece – be it a chair, a painting or a photograph. Years ago I was tasked with finding prints by some guy named Karl Blossfeldt. Admittedly I had never heard of him, and had never seen any Karl Blossfeldt art. The research and hunt for requested prints was afoot! It was then that fell down the Blossfeldt rabbit hole. Read on, and if you don’t already know about him, I can only imagine that you will fall under the same spell I did all those years ago. 

Karl Blossfeldt – Japanese Primrose

Karl Blossfeldt – Gray’s Sedge

Karl Blossfeldt – Indian Balsam

Who is Karl Blossfeldt, Anyway?

Karl Blossfeldt was a German photographer – an “accidental” one, at that. Blossfeldt was actually a sculpture and design professor at his alma mater, The Royal School of the Museum of Decorative Arts. As a professor, he was challenged with finding a way to teach his students about the morphology of plants. Keeping plant subjects from decaying was a recurring issue, so Blossfeldt turned to photography to solve this problem. Photographed plants NEVER decay. 

Karl Blossfeldt is considered one of the major figures (willing or unwilling) of the modernist post World War I movement, Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity). Coined by German art historian, critic, and curator Friedrich Hartlaub, Neue Sachlichkeit was a reaction against expressionism. Primarily a German movement, it faded by 1933 with the fall of the Weimar Republic, and the rise of the Nazi party. 

Karl Blossfeldt Macro Photography

At the turn of the twentieth century there were no cameras that were capable of taking the macro ph

I am obsessed with the photographs of German artist and teacher, Karl Blossfeldt (1865-1932). I discovered his work on Pinterest when I started researching plant forms – specifically seedpods to serve as a spring board for my clay practice.

A sample of Plant Photographs by Karl Blossfeldt

He developed his own cameras that could make photographs that enlarged a subject up to 30 times its size. Originally, his photographs began as a teaching experiment at the Unterrichtsanstalt des Königlichen Kunstgewerbemuseums Berlin, now part of the Kunstwerbe Museum. 

Among his preferred subject matters were plants. 

He believed that ‘the plant must be valued as a totally artistic and architectural structure.’

Ultimately, his photographs served as teaching aids for his students. By sharing his magnified photographs of plants with art students, the photographs illustrated how the intricate structures of plants can inform design. Sounds a lot like “biomimicry“, before the term earned a fancy name.

To see more of his work, please check out some of the links that I provide in this post.

History of the Collection

Karl Blossfeldt’s collection of photographs was published in 1928 in Urformen der Kunst or Art Forms in Nature 30 years after the photos were originally taken. Here is a link to an in depth pdf for more information.

In 1974, Ann and Jürgen Wilde purchased the negatives of the photographs and established the Karl Blossfeldt Archives which is now part of the Ann and Jürgen Wilde Foundation associated with the Bayerische Staatsfamaldesammlungen, Pinakothek der Moderne in Munich, Germany.

Related

Karl Blossfeldt : biography

Karl Blossfeldt : his main artworks