Flowers Are So Pretty

As an amateur photographer, flowers have to be one of the more cliche things to shoot. But I must add, Blossfeldt sure makes me look stupid for even thinking that. One of my newest man crushes in the photography world is Karl Blossfeldt. He is known for his famous images on flowering plants such as his work titled "Pumpkin Tendrils, 4x Magnified," shown below.


He certainly is a very similar photographer to me in style, and in no way am I trying to compare my photos to his since they are no where near his level. His shots became most popular in the late 19th and early 20th century. Mainly, these photos consist of natural forms he has found, usually at a macro level, which he magnifies to create huge prints of anthropomorphizing forms. The way he designs his shots also add to this specifically because they are shot in studio lighting with a blank backdrop, further bridging human and nature. For some it reads as if he is making a comment on the natural forms of humankind, and for some it reads as a showing of the similarities between humans and their close relatives of the plant kind. I personally feel as if Blossfeldt was a revolutionary of the early 20th century. Not only did he say what he wanted to say his photographs, but he did it in a completely different way than anyone had done before. This was the time of painting and photography was still looked at as a sort of documenting, not the designing of thoughts. He got his message across not by telling people what he thought, but by showing them, with real photographic evidence. Although he may have never called himself a designer, he was a designer of modern photography. I still find myself shooting in his styles far after he has lived.