Eryngium Bourgatii Mannetreau, Karl Blossfeldt

Exhibition Label:
"Trees & Other Ramifications: Branches in Nature & Culture," Mar-2009, Steve Goddard
Eryngium is a genus of thistle-like plants. This image of a single leaf is an elegant example of a natural branching form. Around 1900 Blossfeldt founded an archive in Berlin of botanical photographs.

Archive Label 2003 (see second entry below for separate label copy for 1980.0039.09):
These enlarged photographs of carefully lit plants, or parts of plants, placed on neutral ground are typical of plant-form photographs Bloßfeldt took beginning in 1900. Bloßfeldt employed this pre-determined formalism to emphasize the inner structure of organic forms. He was not a trained photographer or a botanist, but rather a sculptor and professor at the School of the Kunstgewrbemuseum (Museum of Decorative Art) in Berlin. He used plant-form photographs from specimens he had gathered to teach Modeling from Living Plants. This course was instituted at the time of Jugendstil (Youth Style), as the Art Nouveau movement was known in Germany.

In 1928 the first book of 120 of Bloßfeldt photographs, Uroformen der Kunst (Archetypes of Art), was published in Germany, and the next year published internationally as Art Forms in Nature. This book catapulted Bloßfeldt into the international arena. In 1929 his photographs were shown at the famous Stuttgart Film und Foto exhibition, alongside works by the much younger photographic avant-garde. (A photograph by American Imogen Cunningham whose work was also included in Film und Foto can be seen on this balcony). Bloßfeldt was heralded as a member of Neue Sachlichkeit, or New Objectivity, a German modernist arts and literature movement. In 1932, a second book of 120 photographs, Wundergarten der Natur, (Nature’s Magic Garden) was published internationally. Bloßfeldt made his plant-form photographs with the intent that they serve as tools for artists to see the totally artistic and architectural structure of plants, necessarily and purposely evolved over time. Their documentary and straightforward approach unintentionally established them as icons of New Objectivity.

Archive Label 2003 (for 1980.0039.09 only):
This enlarged photograph of a poppy seed capsule is typical of Karl Bloßfeldt’s rigorously composed plant-form photographs. A sculptor and professor, he used photographs made with a pre-determined formalism that emphasized the inner structure of organic forms in teaching. In 1928 the first book of 120 of his photographs, Uroformen der Kunst (Archetypes of Art) was published in Germany. It catapulted Bloßfeldt into the international arena. In 1929 his photographs were included in the famous Stuttgart Film und Foto exhibition. Bloßfeldt was heralded as a member of Neue Sachlichkeit, or New Objectivity, a German modernist arts and literature movement. Photo-graphers associated with Neue Sachlichkeit used the camera to present the world as directly as possible, rejecting the affected painterly techniques of pictorialism. Bloßfeldt’s existing body of photographic work, not consciously made as anything but a vehicle for teaching design, was a natural fit.