Karl Blossfeldt: The Architecture of Plants

KARL BLOSSFELDT:
THE ARCHITECTURE OF PLANTS
EXHIBITION DATES: JULY 31ST– SEPT 30TH 2017
PHOTO-EYE BOOKSTORE PROJECT SPACE
376 GARCIA STREET, SUITE A, SANTA FE, NM 87501
FOR MORE INFORMATION, CONTACT:
LAURA ANDRE, LAURA@PHOTOEYE.COM
505-988-5152 X 119

ABOUT THE EVENT
photo-eye Bookstore Project Space is pleased to announce Karl Blossfeldt: The Architecture of Plants, an exhibition featuring twenty exquisite black-and-white photogravure plates from Blossfeldt’s seminal monographs Urformen der Kunst and Wundergarten der Natur.

ABOUT THE ARTWORK
Karl Blossfeldt insisted that ’the plant must be valued as a totally artistic and architectural structure,’ and his iconic monographs Urformen der Kunst and Wundergarten der Natur are a testament to that belief. Published beginning in 1928, Blossfeldt’s work focuses on highly detailed close-up images of plant life laced with a Modern design sensibility a generation ahead of its time. A pioneer in the field of macro-photography, Blossfeldt often constructed his own cameras allowing him to magnify his subject 30x to craft compositions infused with abstract shape, transforming ordinary buds, pods, and twigs into exotic specimens with rhythmic form. Blossfeldt’s images impressed his contemporaries, including the venerable critic and philosopher Walter Benjamin, who compared his work to luminaries such as August Sander and Moholy-Nagy exclaiming that Blossfeldt ”has played his part in that great examination of the inventory of perception, which will have an unforeseeable effect on our conception of the world.”
The photogravure process used in Blossfeldt’s monographs is rich and highly detailed reproducing the continuous tone and sculptural nature of the original images. The images included in this exhibition are rare photogravure plates from the original publications.

ABOUT THE ARTIST
Karl Blossfeldt (June 13, 1865 – December 9, 1932) was a German photographer, educator, and artist who worked in Berlin, Germany, and is best known for his close-up photographs of plants and living things. Blossfeldt originally began photographing as a means of visual aid for his students seeking to expose them to the beauty of natural form. Surprisingly, Blossfeldt never received any formal photographic training, and many of his cameras were made by hand. An archive of his work can be found at the Royal Arts Museum where he was appointed as an instructor of applied art from 1898 to 1930. Urformen der Kunst became an international bestseller in 1929 and his images were included in George Bataille’s influential periodical Documents the same year.