perception is not passive

Look. And look again.

Sometimes, I think about Karl Blossfeldt’s work and realize how much it has participated in shifting my perception of how I look at nature.

On our level of perception, as human beings, things exist at our own scale. We walk through the world and pass countless miniature worlds without ever really noticing them. A plant might simply be a plant. A leaf, a leaf. A seed, something small.

But we are constantly moving through worlds within worlds.

It is only when you zoom in that you begin to realize there is always another world to discover. New shapes, new colours, new textures, new structures. Things that were almost invisible suddenly become enormous in their complexity.

And then I think about how different that same world must appear from another scale.

What does a plant look like to an insect?

What does the surface of a leaf become when you are small enough to experience every ridge, every hair, every indentation as part of your environment?

The plant hasn’t changed.

The world hasn’t changed.

Only the observer has.

And yet, the reality that is experienced feels completely different.

Maybe this is what interests me so much about perception. We tend to think of reality as something fixed. But perhaps what we call reality is always partly shaped by where we are standing, what we are capable of seeing, and the scale at which we encounter something.

There are worlds happening all around us that we simply cannot perceive from where we are.

Blossfeldt’s photographs make me think about this. By isolating plants, enlarging them, and presenting their structures almost like architectural forms, he makes something familiar feel unfamiliar again. Something I might normally walk past becomes something worth stopping for.

And suddenly I am not just looking at a plant.

I am looking at a world I didn't know was there.