Karl Blossfeldt

Karl Blossfeldt is a photographer who I have come across whilst browsing the Internet, i was really interested and taken in by his photographs of flowers and plants.

Blossfeldt was born in 1865 and 1932,  he was a German instructor of sculpture. He used his photographs which were remarkable and were of plant studies to educate the students he taught about the design of nature. Blossfeldt was self taught in photography it was his passion which soon grew into his strongest passion, he devoted himself to the study of nature and was truly intrigued by it, this is why he photographed nothing but plants for thirty five years.

The camera that he used to capture his photographs was homemade, and it was able to magnify the subject he photographed up to thirty times its normal size. This was he was able to bring out the small tiny details within the plants. As he was able to do this he was able to produce some of the most innovative photographic work of his time.

“Blossfeldt was a student in Berlin at a time when the judgenstil movement was at its peak. This 'Young Style' was the German equivalent of Art Nouveau, and used organic designs often found in nature as its inspiration. In 1891 he received a scholarship which allowed him to travel to Italy, Greece, Egypt and North Africa. During this experience abroad he had an extraordinary opportunity to collect many rare and beautiful plant specimens. After five years he returned to Berlin, where he constructed his own large-format camera and began making images of a wide variety of plants.” “Blossfeldt focused on flowers, stems, leaves, buds, tendrils, seeds and seed pods, meticulously arranging them to show the intricate, elegant architectural structure of their natural formations. His photographs were taken using either a vertical or horizontal perspective and could be magnified up to twenty-seven times their actual size, revealing extraordinary details within the natural structure of the plants. In the process he created some of the most innovative photographic work of his time, the simple yet expressive forms captured on film affirmed his boundless artistic and intellectual ability.” - http://www.soulcatcherstudio.com/artists/blossfeldt.html      Images - http://www.soulcatcherstudio.com/exhibitions/blossfeldt/ I really think I could take something from Blossfeldt' work, its really interesting and the amount of detail that you can see, it has such a big impact. I like the way his photographs are all black and white as well, however I don't think this is something I want to do, I want to keep the colour to enable me to capture striking photographs that will have the biggest possible impact.