Structures of Nature: Photographs by Andreas Feininger

“I am both overwhelmed and enchanted by the infinite richness of form, which even humble manifestations of nature can assume. I am awed by the degree of perfection of their structural elements relative to their functions, and moved by the exquisite beauty of many of their forms.”

– Andreas Feininger

“With all that’s big and new, the work of the past can still astonish us. Seashells, insects, and animal bones are objects of fascinating beauty in ‘Structures of Nature,’ a collection of work by Andreas Feininger.”

– Miranda Crowell, American Photo

“The diverse, surprising set of works by 20 photographers acts as an antidote to ignorance, presenting an alternative to the facile or anachronistic images transmitted by the American media.”

– Kevin J. Kelley, Seven Days: Vermont’s Independent Voice

The tiny veins of a leaf, the conical chambers of shells, the curve of a snake’s spine—these are the elements explored in minutest detail in Andreas Feininger’s nature photography.  He captures the beauty, structure, and function in the smallest attribute of animal and plant forms to reveal patterns of symmetry and order.

Raised in Germany and trained at the Bauhaus in the 1920s, Feininger worked as an architect under the legendary Le Corbusier before turning his energies and passion to photography in the early 1930s. After moving to America in 1939, he won fame for his monumental black-and-white urban portraits, notably those of Manhattan’s skyline, which he portrayed as both canyon-like and exquisitely ordered.  A brilliant technician as well as visual innovator, Feininger built his own customized telephoto lenses for his city photos, in addition to a number of close-up cameras for peering into the secrets of the natural world. Fascinated by nature since childhood—especially the intricate structures of organic forms—Feininger soon turned his architect’s eye to the minuscule but no less stunning vistas hidden in a shell or a bone or a leaf, and in the years following published, to much acclaim, his nature photography collections Trees (1968), Shells (1972) and Leaves (1972).

Structures of Nature was the first major exhibition of his nature studies in more than 25 years. All of the photographs in the exhibition were part of the permanent collection of the Joel and Lila Harnett Print Study Center, generously given by the Feininger family and the Bonni Benrubi Gallery in New York.

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