Take some time this weekend to look around you as closely as Karl Blossfeldt did. Using unprecedented magnification (for the 1890s!!), he captured the minute details of plant surfaces—once he came across a specimen that piqued his interest, he felt obliged to return to that same spot for months until he’d captured it to his liking.
The invention of the camera gave artists a powerful means to record the rich tactile variations of fronds, flowers, feathers, crystals, rocks, waves, and more. Anna Atkins was the first to use photography as a means of scientific illustration, finding she could achieve a higher level of specificity in the plants she studied than when drawing by hand. Around the turn of the 20th century Wilson A. Bentley attached a microscope to his camera in order to pick up the minuscule geometries of snow crystals and glowing orbs of dewdrops on a spider web. (During his study of snowflakes, he was the first to discover that each is unique.) Alfred Steigletz immortalized long, drooping grasses laden with thousands of sparkling droplets. They fill the frame, creating an image that is somehow both hard and soft—harmonious in its balance of fragmented light and shadows. Brothers Mike + Doug Starn created similarly-abstracted compositions filled with the supple beams of bamboo that they had lashed together themselves. They too were also entranced by the otherworldly-spikiness of snowflakes.
However fascinating photography of nature’s textures is, we’d hate to pretend that the camera is the only way to capture this. See painted rock stratifications adorned with bulbous, soft, and spiky plants, and rhythmic, whirling tree rings; a tree made up only of concentric and stacking gouache lines; the ancient woodblock-printed whorls and foam of crashing waves; the hand-drawn buttery insides of oyster shells.
We could go on and on about the beauty found in every little speck of dirt, blade of grass, and wing of a ladybug. But that’s not the point, is it? We’ll let art continue this conversation. It’s said that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and it’s absolutely true. There are, quite literally, an infinite number of natural textures to be seen, and an infinite number of ways to see them.
Silphium Laciniatum
Tranquil Teal
Vivacious
Hatō zu 1
Dew on a spider web
Rain Drops
Oyster
Snow Crystals
