Art Forms in Nature 118 1928

Karl Blossfeldt made this photograph, Art Forms in Nature 118, using a camera and lens he built himself. It’s a study of a plant, but the tight cropping and stark black and white tones take it away from the botanical illustration, and it lands somewhere closer to abstraction. The surface is richly textured, a field of clustered organic forms, each a dense little world of its own, creating a real sense of depth within the frame. Zooming in, I see the plant's tiny hairs and bumps, capturing the intricate detail that we often miss with the naked eye. The play of light and shadow accentuates the textures, giving it this almost sculptural quality. Blossfeldt’s obsessive focus reminds me a bit of Agnes Martin’s grids. Both artists found a kind of freedom by setting up restrictions and allowing the unexpected to emerge within those self-imposed boundaries. It highlights how art is about seeing and interpreting, not just recording.