Achillea Umbellata (Yarrow) by Karl Blossfeldt

Achillea Umbellata (Yarrow) before 1928

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photogravure, photography

pencil drawn

photogravure

photography

pencil drawing

realism

Dimensions 10 1/4 x 7 7/16 in. (26.04 x 18.89 cm) (image)12 5/16 x 9 3/8 in. (31.27 x 23.81 cm) (sheet)

This close-up photograph of a Yarrow plant was made by Karl Blossfeldt. Look at the tonality of the print, the darks against the light, and the texture of the plant. I wonder what it was like for Blossfeldt to get up close and personal with this plant, and to really see it in its most simple form. It’s almost like he’s saying, “Hey, look at this thing.” He takes something that we might normally overlook and transforms it into a piece of art. You know, what’s so striking is the plant’s texture. It’s not just smooth; it's got this gritty, almost sculptural quality. It’s like each little leaf is a brushstroke, a deliberate mark that builds up the whole. Blossfeldt's photographs remind us to slow down, to see the extraordinary in the ordinary, and to appreciate the quiet conversations that artists have with the world around them.

Comments

minneapolisinstituteofart over 1 year ago

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Blossfeldt’s works were primarily used as teaching tools and were brought to public attention in with his first publication Urformen der Kunst (Art Forms in Nature). Published in 1928 when Blossfeldt was a professor of applied art, Urformen der Kunst quickly became an international bestseller and in turn, made Blossfeldt famous almost overnight. His contemporaries were impressed by the abstract shapes and structures that he revealed in nature. Soon regarded as a seminal book on photography, Blossfeldt’s objective and highly detailed imagery was praised by German philosopher and cultural critic Walter Benjamin, who declared that Blossfeldt ‘has played his part in that great examination of the inventory of perception, which will have an unforeseeable effect on our conception of the world’. Benjamin compared him to the pioneers of New Objectivity, such as Moholy-Nagy, also seen in this exhibition, and ranked his achievements alongside great photographers such as August Sander.