Above Left: Cirsium Canum by Karl Blossfeldt Above Right: Silphium Laciniatum by Karl BlossfeldtÂ
 10"x8" ($40) | 14"x11" ($85) | 20"x16" ($275) | 24"x20" ($675)
The original architect of everything is nature herself, and nobody knew that better than German photographer and sculptor Karl Blossfeldt. Humankind has, after all, been taking cues from the natural world since we started carving its representation in stone. From the 5th century BC acanthus leaf adorning an ancient Roman Corinthian column to Jeff Koons’s Balloon Flowers, botanical subjects are enduring classics of fine art and architecture.Â
When Blossfeldt, a sculptural iron caster in the early 1880s, switched to studying illustration in Berlin at the Kunstgewerbemuseum, he received a life-changing scholarship from Moritz Meurer, a renowned professor of ornament and design. Meurer became his new teacher, and he had an assignment for Blossfeldt: to travel around Europe and North America photographing botanical specimens that would serve as references for Meurer’s work. To do this, Blossfeldt created a first-of-its-kind camera he'd augmented with specialty magnification lenses.
The nineteenth century was a fertile time in the field of photography, and Blossfeldt was perfectly poised to learn the craft while obsessively cataloging what would ultimately turn out to be a collection of over 6,000 photographs of plants. Both Cirsium Canum (Queen Anne Thistle) and Silphium Laciniatum (Compass Plant) are particularly architectural-looking specimens–it is extremely easy to imagine how either subject would work beautifully as a sculpture. You can say the same for Adiantum Pedatum, the curlicued Blossfeldt image we previously editioned. With its elegant lines and precise composition, the fiddleheads in focus could be a towering piece of public art or a brooch by Alexander Calder.Â
Blossfeldt’s Silphium Laciniatum is an almost anthropomorphic capture. The lean of the leaf is like that of a dancer arching backwards, with all limbs unfurling in a stretch. The Cirsium Canum can easily be imagined as a three-headed being that wonders what your problem is. Blossfeldt’s work was set apart by his uncanny ability to capture in magnified detail not only the structural uniqueness of each bit of flora, but its character.
Towards the end of the 1890s, Blossfeldt became a professor himself, teaching “Modeling from Plants” at his alma mater for 31 years. Within that span of time, the technological advances of photography exploded the form into new avenues, eventually leading to the introduction and acceptance of photography as a fine art medium. No longer just a means to an end, Blossfeldt’s reference photos began to be reexamined as the fine artworks they truly were. The mid 1920s found Blossfeldt with gallery representation for the first time in his life, and before the decade was over, his first monograph, Urformen der Kunst, was published to great acclaim, making the photographer a superstar and cementing his legacy as a fine artist.
Cirsium Canum and Silphium Laciniatum are each exemplary of Blossfeldt’s tender genius and exacting eye. These are not just pretty pictures of plants. They elicit an emotional response. They are elegantly, reverently depicted. They are portraits.Â
More work by Karl Blossfeldt:
