Karl Blossfeldt was born on 13th June 1865 in Schiele, Harz in Germany. He was a photographer, Sculptor, teacher and artist who worked in Berlin. He was well known for his close up photographs of plants.
To begin with, Karl worked as an apprentice in an artistic form of iron casting at the iron foundry in Magdesprung between 1881 and 1883. He then studied art at the Institute of Royal Arts and Museum in Berlin between 1884 and 1890. In 1890-1896 he took part in a project in Italy, collecting plant material for drawing classes. It was during this time that Karl started documenting plant samples photographically. In 1898 he married. In the same year, Karl also started to teach at the Institute of Royal Arts where he previously studied and he continued to work there as a professor from 1921 until 1930.
Karl died in a Berlin hospital of a tumour that spread to his spine and paralysed him on 9th December 1932.
Karl was inspired by nature, living things and the way that plants grow.
Maidenhair Fern
Passion Flower
Love In A Mist
Tow-Rowed Barley
As a self taught photographer, Karl managed to capture such a lot of detail in his work. In my opinion I think that these pictures look a bit flat compared with photography of today but, back in those days they had very basic equipment to what we are lucky to have today. There was no colour photography then, which is probably why they don't really do anything for me. But at the end of the day, he’s more famous for his photographs than I’ll ever be.
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