Horst P. Horst (1906-1999) was one of the twentieth century’s master photographers. A revered figure in the world of fashion image making, he charted sixty years of style for Vogue and House and Garden, from the fashions and celebrities of the 1930s to the interiors of the 1980s.

However, little-known within his body of work – and contrasting intriguingly with his career in fashion – is a set of prints and a book, Patterns from Nature (1946). Working with a Rolleiflex and Graphic View Camera in New York, Monterey and Mexico, Horst photographed the detailed textures and forms of natural objects, including plants, rocks, shells and butterfly wings. His close scrutiny of these forms makes them unfamiliar and revelatory.

These images were gathered into Patterns from Nature, which also featured 9 kaleidoscopic images made by arranging the photographs in simple repeat. Horst believed that these dynamic patterns would be ‘immediately applicable to industrial fields such as textiles, wallpaper, carpets, plastics and glass’.