Last month we shared our first photograph by Karl Blossfeldt.  He was a German photographer renowned for his close up plant photographs.  He became famous almost overnight after the publication of his book in 1929.  People went mad for his pictures, as nobody had seen anything like them before.  If you look back at our Blossfeldt dryopteris post you can read more general information about the artist.  But for this month, we’re bringing you another of his wonderful images.  We wanted to show you these Blossfeldt poppy seedheads.

We think you’ll agree that these photographs elevate these simple garden plants into something really special.  You can clearly see the texture of the whole pod, with the ridged verticals.  The pictures also make the little square holes visible and easy to study.  Blossfeldt achieved this level of magnification, which was astounding for the time, using home made cameras.  This extreme close-up allows the viewer to see all the complicated structure in detail.  Blossfeldt aimed to create images that demonstrated all the amazing patterns in nature.  He wanted his sculpture students to get inspired by all the unusual textures and shapes.  Incredibly, the photographs were really just a teaching aid, but they ended up making him more well known as a photographer than a sculptor!

We’re looking forward to sharing ten more of Blossfeldt’s photographs over the course of 2022.  If you want to see more of his pictures, you can wait for us to share one each month.  Alternatively you can follow the link to Karl Blossfeldt images in the public domain where you’ll find lots of images.