Prima Materia
In 1928, in an essay entitled News about Flowers, Walter Benjamin wrote about Karl Blossfeldt’s collection of plant photographs published that same year: “The person who assembled this collection of plant photographs has acted as a master. He has done his part in compiling an inventory of our perceptions: this will change our image of the world in ways that are still unforeseeable”.1 Thus, according to the German philosopher, observing these plants photographed in their simplest form, against a white background, could overturn our image of the world. How is this possible? Precisely through photography. Karl Blossfeldt deliberately uses the exaggerated magnification effect made possible through close-ups and high-precision optics, as well as sequencing, integrating each individual shot into a community that forms the album. Through these decisions, Blossfeldt uses the photographic medium to produce an image that reveals something that, if not unknown to us, was at least never perceived in this way before...Read the full article in the printed issue. Get OVER Journal 5
1 On this subject, read ‘Connaissance par le kaléidoscope. Morale du joujou et dialectique de l’image selon Walter Benjamin’ (Knowledge through the kaleidoscope. Morality of toys and dialectics of images according to Walter Benjamin), Georges Didi-Huberman, in Études photographiques, Société française de photographie, May 2000, pp. 5-27.
