Art Forms in Nature 60 1928

Karl Blossfeldt made this gelatin silver print, "Art Forms in Nature 60," without a date, but in the early 20th century. Looking at this image, I imagine Blossfeldt in his studio with his camera, meticulously arranging his botanical subject. It's a world away from the paint of the studio, but no less a process of emergence. The textures—the smooth stem contrasting with the intricate, repeating patterns of the flower head—draw me in. What was he thinking when he cropped the image like that? How carefully he must have worked to capture this close-up, bringing out the almost architectural structure of the plant. It reminds me of some of Georgia O'Keefe's paintings or even some of the work of the Bauhaus artists. There's a conversation happening here across different media, a shared interest in the underlying forms of nature.