A botanist's close-up photographs of plants revealed hidden geometry in nature

arts, ideas & societyThe Public Domain Review1928 · Berlin, Germany

A botanist's close-up photographs of plants revealed hidden geometry in nature

the gist

Karl Blossfeldt, a German teacher of design, photographed plants at extreme close range to show students the patterns they hid. Using a homemade camera with custom magnifying lenses, he captured stems, buds and fronds as if under a microscope, making them look like sculptures. He collected many of his specimens from railway embankments and track sides, not from florists or gardens. His photographs were gathered into Urformen der Kunst, or Art Forms in Plants, in 1928, which became an international bestseller. The book's plates show horsetails, ferns and seed pods transformed into abstract forms.

how it works

Blossfeldt used a camera with magnifying lenses that let him fill the frame with a small part of a plant at a large scale. Lighting and a plain background isolated the shape, so details like tendrils and bud structures became graphic patterns.

so what

Blossfeldt's images helped define New Objectivity and the New Vision in Weimar Germany, showing that photography could reveal forms the naked eye misses. Walter Benjamin praised the work for revealing an optical unconscious, a hidden layer of reality exposed by the camera. The book influenced how artists and designers saw nature and ornament.

the bigger pattern

Close-up photography of small natural forms has a long lineage, from Ernst Haeckel's illustrations of marine life to modern macro photography of insects and crystals.

fun fact

Blossfeldt was 63 when his first photography book appeared, and he had been a teacher at the Berlin school for three decades.

Hampi was once one of the world's largest cities, until its Vijayanagara capital was destroyed in 1565

the gist

Hampi is a UNESCO World Heritage Site in Karnataka, India, with more than 1,600 surviving remains spread over 4,100 hectares. It was the capital of the Vijayanagara Empire from 1336 to 1565. Travellers from Persia and Portugal described it as a prosperous, wealthy and grand city with temples, markets and farms along the Tungabhadra River. By 1500 it was estimated to be the world's second-largest city after Beijing, and probably India's richest at the time. In 1565 a coalition of Muslim sultanates defeated the Vijayanagara Empire, its capital was conquered and destroyed, and the city was left in ruins. Hampi remains a religious centre, with the active Virupaksha Temple at its heart.

how it works

The city was built around a fortified core with temples, markets and water structures along the river, supplied by an extensive network of roads and waterworks. When the empire fell, the city was not rebuilt, so its stone monuments were left standing.

so what

Hampi shows how quickly a great city can vanish after a military defeat, and how a ruined capital can remain sacred. Its ruins give historians a view of medieval South Asia that few other sites can match.

fun fact

The name Hampi comes from Pampa, an old name for the Tungabhadra River.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia · text CC BY-SA 4.0

Image: Wikimedia Commons

source: Wikipedia ↗

2 min

politicsshortCNA2:01

False allegations about Singapore’s hand in Indonesia’s markets and a made-up meeting

from CNA

CNA Verify has found close to 400 posts pushing falsehoods tying Singapore to Indonesia’s stock market rout and to a secret meeting that never took place. Together, they drew nearly 12 million views, and some were circulated by accounts that appeared to be working in concert, across multiple social media platforms.

Here’s how the disinformation campaign targeting Singapore was uncovered.

on YouTube: CNA ↗