Karl Blossfeldt at the Whitechapel Gallery

The German photographer Karl Blossfeldt spent a large portion of his life studying organic forms, selecting plant specimens like an entomologist who collects and catalogs butterflies. Yet, Blossfeldt captured his samples not with insect pins, but rather with a camera. Looking through the more than eighty original prints included in this exhibition, all produced using homemade cameras that allowed for extra magnification, one gains a clear sense of what fascinated Blossfeldt for over thirty-five years. The prints reveal grasping fronds, intricately unfolding tendrils, and stems covered in tiny rhizoids (root hairs) that seem to mutate into architectural structures, the frenetic patterned surfaces of modernist designs, or an anthropomorphic cast of curious actors.