Karl Blossfeldt (1865–1932) was a German photographer, sculptor and teacher celebrated for stark, highly magnified close-ups of plants. Trained originally in sculpture, he made his botanical photographs as teaching aids, using them to reveal the underlying geometry and architecture of natural form.

Published to acclaim in Urformen der Kunst (Art Forms in Nature, 1928), his images became touchstones of New Objectivity, prized for the way they disclose the precise, almost engineered structures hidden within buds, stems and seed-heads.