awesome awesome link!

Blossfeldt is my hero. I've always been tickled by the fact that these beautiful photos were done not as art pieces, but as templates for an industrial design class. He shows great respect for the objects he's photographing and the integrity of their shapes, unlike the ghastly floral photography of, for instance, Maplethorpe.

Plenty of his stuff available from Taschen books, and they're well worth having on paper.

I think Maplethorpe flowers are supposed to be sex objects,
not architecture/design objects which will account for a lot
of the difference.

> I think Maplethorpe flowers are supposed to be sex
> objects, not architecture/design objects which will
> account for a lot of the difference

Yeah, I guees I shouldn't knock his photos for being what he wants them to be (though I'm unlikely to stop :)) - but I have a personal gripe against photographers who I feel use objects as a source of intersting shapes, without reference to the essence of the object depicted. I guess that manages to be both fuzzy and contentious, but there you go...

I don't mind Maplethorpe using humans as sex objects - after all, they've got to be good for something - but hands off those flowers!

And just thinking - I love Georgia O'Keefe's flower paintings, and they're certainly sexual enough. Who knows...