Albert Renger-Patzsch: Joy before the Object [Hardcover]

Donald Kuspit (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 26, 1993

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.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

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

Review

Renger-Patzsch spent a lifetime photographing 'things' and imbued them with a vibrating, sometimes disturbing, life."--ARTnews

"There is an urgent need to examine old opinions and look at things from a new viewpoint. There must be an increase in the joy one takes in an object, and the photographer should become fully conscious of the splendid fidelity of reproduction made possible by his technique. Nature, after all, is not so poor that she requires constant improvement." --Albert Renger-Patzsch, Joy Before the Object, 1928

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 82 pages
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA; 1st edition (August 26, 1993)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0892362731
• ISBN-13: 978-0892362738
• Product Dimensions: 11.6 x 9.8 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,563,195 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Renger-Patzsch is a greater photographer than weston., March 11, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Albert Renger-Patzsch: Joy Before the Object (Aperture) (Paperback)

I have not read this book, but I have two other of his books, and i feel that he is a much greater photographer than Weston, great as the latter is. Just the now well-known landscape that was in the New Yorker, an astonishing work, is much more sophisticated than Weston.