Art Forms in Nature 8 1928

Karl Blossfeldt made this photograph of plants sometime between the late 19th and early 20th century, using a camera he built himself. He shows us the potential for photography to be a really manual, handcrafted medium. There's a certain starkness in the images that reminds me of drawings. Look at the texture – the way the light catches on the ridges and valleys of the plants. The contrast feels really graphic. It’s almost like he's trying to distill these organic forms into their essential geometry. It reminds me of Agnes Martin's grids or Sol LeWitt's structures, in that it finds something very human in its systematic, repetitive nature. But here, it's all coming from nature itself. It reveals how art is everywhere if we’re willing to look close enough.