Albert Renger-Patzsch

(b Wurzburg, 22 June 1897; d Wamel, 27 Sept 1966). German photographer. He began taking photographs as a schoolboy. He was influenced by his father, an enthusiastic amateur. After active service in World War I, he studied chemistry (1919-21) in Dresden but did not complete his degree. In 1922 he became the director of the picture archive of the Folkwang-Auriga publishing house in Hagen, where, among other things, he provided much of the pictorial material for the books on plants by the owner of the press, Ernst Fuhrmann (e.g. Das Photographieren von Bl?ten, 1924; see PHOTOGRAPHY, fig. 22). When Renger-Patzsch's first book of photographs, Das Chorgest?hl von Kappenberg (1925), appeared, he left the press and opened a studio in Bad Harzburg.

See the Abbreviations for further details.

Renger-Patzsch, Albert (1897-1966), German photographer and, with Sander and Blossfeldt, leading exponent of German Neue Sachlichkeit. Having practised photography since his teens, he took it up professionally after studying chemistry in Dresden (1919-21), and in the mid-1920s published books on animals and natural forms and medieval choir stalls. He became committed to a form of documentary realism that separated him decisively from both pictorialism and the experimental ‘art photography’ of the avant-garde. Photography's supreme capability, he believed, was to capture the form and detail of organic and man-made objects with unequalled clarity and precision. Visual rhetoric and ‘creative’ distortion had no part in it. Tight, head-on composition, deep focus, diffused lighting, and close-ups were its tools. His approach was epitomized by his internationally acclaimed book Die Welt ist schön (The World is Beautiful, 1928), which contained images of leaves, animals, and industrial machinery and buildings. Interestingly, it was attacked by right-wingers like Erna Lendvai-Dircksen for being denatured and rootless and by leftist critics like Walter Benjamin for being dehumanized and in thrall to advertising. (Renger-Patzsch in fact created outstanding advertising photographs for the Jena Glass Works, and other important technical and industrial work.) In 1929 he participated in the Film und Foto exhibition in Stuttgart and accepted a teaching post at the Folkwang School in Essen.

During the Second World War Renger-Patzsch worked as a war photographer. In 1944 his entire archive was bombed. After the war he continued to do landscape, architectural, and industrial work, and received numerous awards. In the course of his career he published more than 35 books.

— Robin Lenman

Bibliography

• Wilde, A., Albert Renger-Patzsch (1997).
• Heckert, V. (ed.), ‘Albert Renger-Patzsch’, History of Photography, 21 (1997)

Albert Renger-Patzsch (June 22, 1897 – September 27, 1966) was a German photographer associated with the New Objectivity.

Renger-Patzsch was born in Würzburg and began making photographs by age twelve. After military service in the First World War he studied chemistry at Dresden Technical College. In the early 1920s he worked as a press photographer for the Chicago Tribune before becoming a freelancer and, in 1925, publishing a book, The choir stalls of Cappenberg. He had his first museum exhibition in 1927.

A second book followed in 1928, Die Welt ist schön (The World is Beautiful). This, his best-known book, is a collection of one hundred of his photographs in which natural forms, industrial subjects and mass-produced objects are presented with the clarity of scientific illustrations. In its sharply focused and matter-of-fact style his work exemplifies the esthetic of The New Objectivity that flourished in the arts in Germany during the Weimar Republic.

During the 1930s Renger-Patzsch made photographs for industry and advertising. His archives were destroyed during the Second World War. In 1944 he moved to Wamel Dorf, where he lived the rest of his life.

References

• Michalski, Sergiusz (1994). New Objectivity. Cologne: Benedikt Taschen. ISBN 3-8228-9650-0
• Schmied, Wieland (1978). Neue Sachlichkeit and German Realism of the Twenties. London: Arts Council of Great Britain. ISBN 0-7287-0184-7

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