Plantstudie 1928

Karl Blossfeldt made this ‘Plantstudie’ sometime in the first decades of the twentieth century. It’s a gelatin silver print of a plant. But it looks to me like a sculpture, or a model! I can imagine Blossfeldt in his studio, adjusting the light, and shifting position ever so slightly, trying to capture the essence of this plant, finding the perfect angle to reveal its form. He zooms right in, so the flower fills the whole composition, and we can't avoid staring at it. The plant has a kind of stoic presence, the black and white really flattens it. It's almost gothic, very German somehow. Blossfeldt, like other photographers, found new ways of seeing through a machine. I’m left thinking about how we see, what we choose to focus on, and how those choices shape our understanding of the world.