Biography provided by Focal press
 
For over 30 years, Blossfeldt produced thousands of sharp focus, black and white, close-up details of plant forms, frontally or from above, against neutral white or gray backgrounds, to reveal the elementary structures of the natural world and their relation to artistic form. By isolating and enlarging discrete portions of a subject — the characteristics, details, patterns, and textures that would otherwise go unobserved by human vision or conventional photography — Blossfeldt made the imperceptible perceptible. His book Urformen der Kunst (Archetypes of Art, 1928), became a landmark of the Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity).
 
(Author: RH)
 
Michael Peres (Editor-in-Chief), 2007, Focal Encyclopedia of Photography, 4th edition, (Focal Press) [ISBN-10: 0240807405, ISBN-13: 978-0240807409] (Used with permission)
 
Wikipedia
 
Karl Blossfeldt (13 June 1865 - 9 December 1932) was a German photographer and sculptor. He is best known for his close-up photographs of plants and living things, published in 1929 as Urformen der Kunst. He was inspired, as was his father, by nature and the ways in which plants grow.