Albert Renger-Patzsch: Joy before the Object

Kuspit, Donald

ISBN 10: 0892362731 / ISBN 13: 9780892362738

Published by Oxford University Press, 1993

About this Item

Jacket rub.

Seller Inventory # ABE-1693412565761

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Albert Renger-Patzsch: Joy before the Object
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Publication Date: 1993
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0892362731
• ISBN 13: 9780892362738
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: 1st Edition
• Condition: Very Good
• Dust Jacket Condition: Very Good

About this title

Synopsis

The great German photographer Albert Renger-Patzsch was a contemporary of Moholy-Nagy and Brecht and a close friend of Hermann Hesse, yet his work is little known in the English-speaking world. Born in Wurzburg in 1897, Renger-Patzsch was a member of the movement that came to be known as Neue Sachlichkeit ("New Objectivity"). His most famous book Die Welt ist schon (The World is Beautiful), published in 1928, immediately established him as one of the leading photographers in Germany. This volume brings together sixty-five of Renger-Patzsch's photographs, many of them never before published. Together they help trace the life, career, and influence of one of the century's most important photographers, and will be an essential resource for scholars, social historians, and students of photography.

Reviews

Renger-Patzsch was sometimes considered the German Edward Weston because he, too, used photography in its purest, most transparent form--for sharply focused, beautifully detailed black-and-white prints. We know him for his close-ups of plants, animals, and industrial forms and for his pristinely composed views of trees and forests (trees were his spiritual "home" as subjects). Many of these appeared in his important 1928 volume, Die Welt ist sch{™}on, which was influential in the movement known as New Objectivity. This volume, bearing a title that better characterizes Renger-Patzsch's attitude, is a representative selection of his work. The accompanying "critical-biographical profile" of the photographer (Renger-Patzsch didn't call himself an artist, nor photography art) by Donald Kuspit wrestles most importantly with early critical response, especially the early dismissal of Renger-Patzsch by Marxist critic Walter Benjamin. Gretchen Garner