Art Forms in Nature 70 1928

These stark black and white photographs of flowers and plants by Karl Blossfeldt make me think of scientific illustration but also something altogether more sensuous, almost sinister. I can imagine Blossfeldt, hunched over his plants, coaxing out these images from the darkroom like a magician. His work reminds me a little of Georgia O’Keefe, who made similarly bold and up-close images of flowers. I wonder if she saw these photographs, or if they were just both tuned into the same frequency of looking and seeing the world. Look at the almost menacing thorns around the flower heads, or the strange, insectile shapes of the buds and stems. His close cropping and monochrome palette really isolates the pure form of the plants, bringing out their architectural qualities. It's not quite real life but a version of real life, heightened and abstracted through the eyes of the artist. It makes you see things that were already there, and maybe some things that weren't.