Abstract
The essay provides a commentary on Walter Benjamin’s “News from Flowers”, a review of the album of plant photography of Karl Blossfeldt. I place Benjamin’s account of Blossfeldt’s achievement both in relation to Goethe’s studies of the vegetal realm as well as to the fantasy world of Grandville’s Animated Flowers. This juxtaposition allows me to interpret Benjamin’s understanding of the possibilities opened by photography and the transformation it brings to the relation of art to science and the imagination.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 295-306 |
| Number of pages | 12 |
| Journal | Critical Horizons |
| Volume | 18 |
| Issue number | 4 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - 2 Oct 2017 |
Keywords
- Goethe
- Karl Blossfeldt
- Walter Benjamin
- fantasy
- photography
- primal phenomena
- types
All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes
- Sociology and Political Science
- Philosophy