German artist and designer Karl Blossfeldt published these photographs at the age of 63 with a homemade magnifying lens affixed to his camera in 1928. He is said to have taken over 600 of these photographs, explaining,
“Plants are a treasure trove of forms — one which is carelessly overlooked only because the scale of shapes fails to catch the eye and sometimes this makes the forms hard to identify. But that is precisely what these photographs are intended to do — to portray diminutive forms on a convenient scale and encourage students to pay them more attention.”
We are taught a natural hierarchy from a young age - with humans at the top of the animal kingdom. Inherent in this teaching is the assumption that the order of food chains equate to intelligence and systemic hierarchy. Consumption, power and supersession glorified as hallmarks of a successful species. If we are to break this assumption, to move beyond this thinking and enter into a world that recognizes wisdom in all forms, we can start to learn from other organisms and implement these teachings into how we build relationships, communities and systems that benefit all organisms.
Karl Blossfeldt’s photographs help us to experience the practice of looking, seeing, and observing the plant’s parts in isolation. Zoom into parts you haven’t noticed before, see the curve of the vine, the subtle hairs on the leaf, or the shape of a leaf formed to funnel rain. As the artist and printer Corita Kent said, “Always be ready to see what you haven’t seen before. It’s a kind of looking where you don’t know what you’re looking for.” -Publisher
