Udo will soon be going to primary school, but Anna can already read. Doreen likes to party, and Irmfried is disoriented. Of course, Udo is a rubber plant (or, ficus elastica); Anna, a heartleaf philodendron; Doreen, a ponytail palm; and Irmfried, a succulent. But to the German photographer Frederik Busch, these plants have no less personality than their human counterparts.

“I have a sensitivity for plants,” he admitted. “I approach them as beings, as living organisms and at the same time as kinetic sculptures. They just move very slowly.”

In late 2008, Mr. Busch was doing corporate assignments, a world that could not have been farther from his own background in art photography, when he noticed a row of plants in an office hallway.