Art Forms in Nature 20 1928

These black and white photographs by Karl Blossfeldt are from a series called Art Forms in Nature. I can imagine him crouched over plants in his studio, using a homemade camera to magnify the botanical world. He found incredible forms hidden there. Look at the symmetry of these buds and stems; they remind me of gothic arches, Art Nouveau metalwork or even Surrealist sculptures. Blossfeldt saw how nature anticipates art, a seed pod mirroring the shape of a decorative finial. His work makes me think about the connections between seeing and making. Photography, like painting, is a way of framing the world, extracting shapes, textures and patterns. Blossfeldt’s photographs influenced artists of the New Objectivity movement, but also Surrealists. It feels like a conversation across disciplines about how we perceive, represent, and transform the forms around us. The conversation is still open!