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Karl Blossfeldt. Urformen der Kunst . Berlin: Wasmuth, 1928
“What today has come to be regarded as among the finest bodies of work in early-twentieth-century photography began as a teaching experiment. Karl Blossfeldt, a new lecturer at the Unterrichtsanstalt des Königlichen Kunstgewerbemuseums Berlin (The institute of the royal arts and crafts museum Berlin), was looking for a way to showcase examples of the forms and patterns he discovered in the natural world that he believed should inspire his students’ own work (…)Blossfeldt came up with an idea of making greatly enlarged photographs (…)His first collection of photographs, Urformen der Kunst (Art forms in nature), published in 1928, caused an immediate sensation and would go on to appear in numerous editions in several languages (…) Long before Blossfeldt’s photographs were hailed alongside the work of Albert Renger-Patzsch and August Sander as essential representatives of Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity), they allowed the instructor of decorative arts to do what he otherwise couldn’t, which was to preserve the ephemeral forms of nature for classroom teaching.”
Hanako Murata. "Material forms in nature: the photographs of Karl Blossfeldt" [online]. Object: Photo, modern photographs 1909-1949. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 2014