Horsetail, 14 x enlarged (1929)

Title: Horsetail (Equisetum)

Place of Publication: Germany

Artist: Karl Blossfeldt (1865-1932)

Year: 1929

Technique: Original photogravure (heliogravure)

Size (inc. mat): 40 x 30 cm Size image: 25.4 x 18.8 cm

Professionally matted in acid-free museum quality mat-board.

Karl Blossfeldt (13 June 1865 – 9 December 1932) was a German photographer and sculptor. His most famous work was a photographic series of close-up plants and living things, published in 1929 as Urformen der Kunst. Blossfeldt studied illustration at the Kunstgewerbemuseum’s education department in Berlin and worked for Moritz Meurer (a decorative artist and professor of ornament and design). While Blossfeldt travelled through Europe and North Africa in the 1890s, he started photographing botanical specimens to use as reference photos for his own artwork. It wasn’t until the 1920s that his photographs received recognition for their artistic value. The photographs were published as a series of photogravures in 1928, and a second publication followed soon after under the title Wundergarten der Natur.

Blossfeldt’s photographs focus on the naturally recurring geometric structures of his subjects, which he wanted to photograph as clearly and as focused as possible. Therefore, he used solid colour (grey or white) backgrounds in order to provide contrast. This highlighted the patterns and symmetry of the plants that Blossfeldt was aiming to capture. Blossfeldt is regarded as a pioneer of close-up photography who received great praise. Even long after his death, his Urformen der Kunst is regarded as one of the most important photographic books of the twentieth century.

Photogravure (or Heliogravure) proved to be an appropriate medium for Blossfeldt, as this technique allows for a larger variety of tones while also allowing his photographs to be reproduced in quantity without loss of quality. Photogravure (in French héliogravure) is a process for printing photographs, also sometimes used for reproductive intaglio printmaking. It is a photo-mechanical process whereby a copper plate is grained (adding a pattern to the plate) and then coated with a light-sensitive gelatin tissue which has been exposed to a film positive, and then etched, resulting in a high-quality intaglio plate that can reproduce detailed continuous tones of a photograph. The process was important in 19th-century photography, but by the 20th century, it was only used by some fine art photographers. By the mid-century it was almost extinct, but it has since seen a limited revival.