photography
Karl Blossfeldt (June 13, 1865 – December 9, 1932 - age 67) was a German photographer, sculptor, teacher, and artist who worked in Berlin, Germany. He is best known for his close-up photographs of plants and living things, published in 1929 as, Urformen der Kunst. He was inspired, as was his father, by nature and the way in which plants grow. He believed that 'the plant must be valued as a totally artistic and architectural structure.'
Among his students at the Berlin Arts and Crafts School was Heinz Warneke. From 1924, he was professor at the Vereinigte Staatsschulen für freie und angewandete Kunst (United State School for Fine and Applied Art) in Berlin
Among his students at the Berlin Arts and Crafts School was Heinz Warneke. From 1924, he was professor at the Vereinigte Staatsschulen für freie und angewandete Kunst (United State School for Fine and Applied Art) in Berlin
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Blossfeldt made many of his photographs with a homemade camera that could magnify the subject up to thirty times its size, revealing details within a plant's natural structure. Appointed a teaching post at the Institute of Royal Arts Museum in 1898 (and where he remained until 1930), he established an archive for his photographs. Blossfeldt never received formal training in photography. Blossfeldt developed a series of homemade cameras that allowed him to photograph plant surfaces in unprecedented magnified detail. This reflected his enduring interest in the repetitive patterns found in nature's textures and forms.
In Berlin from the late nineteenth century until his death, Blossfeldt’s works were primarily used as teaching tools and were brought to public attention in 1928 by his first publication Urformen der Kunst (Art Forms in Nature). His contemporaries were impressed by the abstract shapes and structures in nature that he revealed. Swiftly regarded as a seminal book on photography, Blossfeldt’s factual yet finely detailed imagery was praised by Walter Benjamin, declared that Karl Blossfeldt ‘has played his part in that great examination of the inventory of perception, which will have an unforeseeable effect on our conception of the world’. |
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photograph analysisThere is a clear strong image that fills the page and is a good size. It varies texture between light and dark, by the light areas standing out and also the dark areas having different tones. The fact that it is in black and white contrasts really well. The vantage point from which the photographer has taken the picture is well done as the flower is not bang in the centre of the screen and it’s not too far away. You can see every little bit of detail really well and you can see all the different tones of black and white. The bit of the picture that stands out to me is the petals. They have so much detail in them and different shades. There is a little bit of a shadow behind the petals which suggests there was some type of light source shining on the flower when taken. The bit of the flower that doesn’t stand out is the stalk which is just one plain colour and doesn’t really stand out at all. Its quiet dull to me.
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