#12 Albert Renger-Patzsch

Stairwell, View from Below, 1929

Albert Renger-Patzsch (1987 - 1966) is a German photographer whose cool, detached images formed the photographic component of the Neue Sachlichkeit (“New Objectivity”) movement.

Shoemaking Irons, 1928

In 1925 Renger-Patzsch began to pursue photography as a full-time career as a freelance documentary and press photographer. He rejected both Pictorialism, which was in imitation of painting, and the experimentation of photographers who relied on startling techniques. In his photographs, he recorded the exact, detailed appearance of objects, reflecting his early pursuit of science. He felt that the underlying structure of his subjects did not require any enhancement by the photographer. In his book Die Welt ist schön (1928; “The World Is Beautiful”), he showed images from both nature and industry, all treated in his clear, transparent style. Such images were closely related to the paintings of the Neue Sachlichkeit (The New Objectivity) movement of painters, who created detached and literal renderings of reality that were so extreme that they produced an eerie effect.

Parasol Mushroom, 1930s

In its sharply focused and matter-of-fact style his work exemplifies the aesthetic of The New Objectivity that flourished in the arts in Germany during the Weimar Republic. Like Edward Weston in the United States, Renger-Patzsch believed that the value of photography was in its ability to reproduce the texture of reality, and to represent the essence of an object. He wrote: "The secret of a good photograph—which, like a work of art, can have esthetic qualities—is its realism (...) Let us therefore leave art to artists and endeavor to create, with the means peculiar to photography and without borrowing from art, photographs which will last because of their photographic qualities."

Norway Oslofjord, chalk tubers, 1960

In the early 1930s, Renger-Patzsch taught photography. From the 1940s until his death, he focused on his own projects, working as a freelance photographer and publishing his photographs. His later subjects included natural landscapes, industrial landscapes (Eisen und Stahl, 1930), trees (Bäume, 1962), and stones (Gestein, 1966).

Spinning machines, 1950s