Karl Blossfeldt (1865-1932) was a great pioneer of botanical photography, yet he was neither a professional photographer nor a botanist. A professor at the Academy of Applied Arts in Berlin, he was a sculptor and amateur photographer, and his interest in the plant world was originally educational. Fascinated by the structure of plants, whose apparently artistic forms were created by biological expediency, he realized that photography could be a useful teaching tool, allowing his students to see and compare many natural forms. Blossfeldt worked with a homemade camera and gathered and photographed his own plant samples, magnifying them by up to 45 times.