The Absolute Realist: Collected Writings of Albert Renger-Patzsch, 1923–1967 - Softcover

Renger-Patzsch, Albert

Softcover

ISBN 10: 160606780X ISBN 13: 9781606067802

Publisher: Getty Research Institute, 2023

Synopsis

This annotated anthology presents the first English translation of German photographer Albert Renger-Patzsch’s collected writings.
 
A towering figure in the history of photography, Albert Renger-Patzsch (1897–1966) has come to epitomize New Objectivity, the neorealist movement in modernist literature, film, and the visual arts recognized as the signature artistic style of Germany’s Weimar Republic. Today, his images are regularly exhibited and widely considered key influences on contemporary photographers. Whether they capture geometrically intricate cacti, flooded tidal landscapes, stacks of raw materials, or imposing blast furnace towers, Renger-Patzsch’s photographs embody what his peer Hugo Sieker termed “absolute realism,” an approach predicated upon the idea that photographers have one task: to exploit the camera’s unique capacity to document with uncompromising detail.
 
Not only a photographer, Renger-Patzsch was also an influential and lucid writer who advocated his unique brand of uncompromising realism in almost a half century’s worth of articles, essays, lectures, brochures, and unpublished manuscripts addressing photography, technology, and modernity. Drawing on his papers at the Getty Research Institute and other archives, The Absolute Realist unites in one volume this skillful photographer’s ideas about the defining visual medium of modernity. 

About this title

About the Author

Daniel H. Magilow is professor of German at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.

Edition details

• Publisher: Getty Research Institute
• Publication date: 2023
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 160606780X
• ISBN 13: 9781606067802
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 340