The prints from Urformen der Kunst are often confused with and sold as hand-pulled photogravures. While beautiful, they are actually high quality machine made rotogravures. This confusion exemplifies one of the challenges facing collecting and curating photomechanical works. They are often timed difficult to identify. We have put together an identification ‘guide’ on this site to help clear up some of the confusion. It can be found here: https://photogravure.com/identification-guide/

Never formally trained in photography, Blossfeldt made many of his photographs with a camera that he altered to photograph plant surfaces with unprecedented magnification. His pictures achieved notoriety among the artistic avant-garde with the support of gallerist Karl Nierendorf, who mounted a solo show of the pictures paired with African sculptures at his gallery in 1926 and, subsequently, produced the first edition of Blossdeldt’s monograph Urformen der Kunst (Art forms in nature), in 1928. Following the enormous success of the book, Blossfeldt published a second volume of his plant pictures, titled Wundergarten der Natur (The magic garden of nature), in 1932. The clarity, precision, and apparent lack of mediation of his pictures, along with their presentation as analogues for essential forms in art and architecture, won him acclaim from the champions of New Vision photography. His work was a central feature of important exhibitions, including Fotografie der Gegenwart and Film und Foto, both in 1929. (MOMA)