PHOTOBOOK: ART FORMS IN NATURE – KARL BLOSSFELDT

RESEARCHING THE PHOTOBOOK:

Using innovative techniques, photographer Blossfeldt produced arresting images of seed pods, buds, stems, and other botanical items. This spectacular collection features scores of his remarkable photographs of plant life, offering artists and craftspeople a treasury of royalty-free pictures and design inspirations.

Blossfeldt became fascinated with nature and nature object. He became interested in the structure behind beautiful forms, this led to his ground breaking collection of thousands of photographs of natural forms, which then he created the book ‘Art forms in Nature‘.

‘Art forms in Nature’ can be described as nature writing. Since Blossfeldt’s photography consists of some 6,000 photographs of plants and segments it shows that his intention and main aspect in the book is about nature. Through his nature photography he is able to document natures structures, and create abstract art. The aesthetics of Blossfeld’s photos, lies between New Objectivity and Surrealism, especially while reviewing over their historical context.

NEW OBJECTIVITY –

was a movement in German art that arose during the 1920s as a reaction against expressionism.

SURREALISM –

1. aims to revolutionise human experience. It balances a rational vision of life with one that asserts the power of the unconscious and dreams. The movement’s artists find magic and strange beauty in the unexpected and the uncanny, the disregarded and the unconventional.

2. is an art and cultural movement that developed in Europe in the aftermath of World War I in which artists aimed to allow the unconscious mind to express itself, often resulting in the depiction of illogical or dreamlike scenes and ideas.

IMAGES INCLUDED IN THE BOOK:

HOW DID BLOSSFELDT MAKE HIS IMAGES:

Blossfeldt chose to depict natural objects in extreme close ups. Using his homemade camera he could zoom in so close to a plant’s leaves and stem that, unlike any photographs of natural objects seen before, they became new beings entirely. Blossfeldt developed a series of home-made camera lenses that allowed him to magnify his plant subjects by thirty times, producing unprecedented detail.

Blossfeldt was one of the first photographers to manufacture his own unique camera. His camera was made of wood and had one metre long bellows. In the 1930s the photographs he produced with it were just as unique as the homemade contraption itself. Blossfeldt chose to depict natural objects in extreme close ups