Alphabet der Pflanzen

Karl Blossfeldt (1865-1932) was neither a professional photographer nor a natural scientist, but a professor at the School of Arts and Crafts in Berlin, a sculptor, and an amateur photographer. His interest in the world of plants was both artistic and educational: he focused on the structure of plants, their organic composition, and their "highest artistic form" born out of practicality, which he aimed to make visible and comparable through photography. His goal was to create a systematic catalog of forms that would serve as a teaching and reference book for visual artists, craftsmen, and especially architects. In the late 1920s, Blossfeldt published his photographs in two books - "Urformen der Kunst" and "Wundergarten der Natur" - which had a lasting impact on the art of his time. They made their author famous overnight and have since become classics in the fields of photography and art history. The literary scholar Gert Mattenklott wrote the introductory text for our selection of the 44 most beautiful of Blossfeldt's strictly factual yet simultaneously poetic plant portraits, first published in 1991.