| Dates: | 1897, 22 June - 1966, 27 September | | Born: | Germany, Würzburg | | Active: | Germany | | Gender: | Male |
A technically brilliant photographer who took a wide range of subject matter from industrial, still lives, landscapes and flowers. One of the medium‘s great realists, Renger-Patzsch brought a razor sharp, analytical vision to his photography, also working as a press, advertising and industrial photographer and war correspondent.
[Courtesy of Pam Roberts]Preparing biographies
Biography provided by Focal Press
A proponent of photography’s Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity.) Renger-Patzsch’s collection of 100 photographs of nature and industry, Die Welt ist Schon (The World is Beautiful) published in 1928, exemplifies the rationality, precision, and faithfulness to subject he characterized as inherent photographic qualities. A purist, Renger-Patzsch helped define photography in the late 1920s and 1930s as a unique, autonomous art form with realism at its essence. His precisely crafted images of natural and factory made objects eschewed subjective influences, and strove to reveal, with rational purity, the material world’s order and beauty.
(Author: Garie Waltzer - Photographer and consultant)
Michael Peres (Editor-in-Chief), 2007, Focal Encyclopedia of Photography, 4th edition, (Focal Press) [ISBN-10: 0240807405, ISBN-13: 978-0240807409]
(Used with permission)
Readings on, or by, individual photographers
1958, Schubert & Salzer. Maschinenfabrik. Aktiengesellschaft Ingolstadt. 75 Jahre Textilmaschinen bau. Das Portrait eines Industriebetriebes, (Ingolstadt) [LL_REF:2282]
Kuspit, D., 1993, Joy Before the Object, (Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum) [LL_REF:1532]
Renger-Patzsch, Albert, 1928, Die Welt ist schön: Ein Hundert photographische Aufnahmen, (Munich: Kurt Wolff Verlag) [LL_REF:877]
Renger-Patzsch, Albert, 1979, Albert Renger-Patzsch: 100 Photographs, (Köln: Schürmann and Kicken; Paris: Créatis,) [LL_REF:876]
Wilde, A., Wilde, J., and Weske, T., 1997, Albert Renger-Patzsch: Photographer of Objectivity, (London: Thames & Hudson) [LL_REF:1533]
If you feel this list is missing a significant book or article please let me know - Alan - alan@luminous-lint.com
| |
Family history
If you are related to this photographer and interested in tracking down your extended family we can place a note here for you to help. It is free and you would be amazed who gets in touch.
alan@luminous-lint.com |
|
Exhibitions on this website |
 | Albert Renger-Patzsch: Machine parts |
|  | Albert Renger-Patzsch: Ruhrchemie factory, Oberhausen-Holten, Germany |
|  | Albert Renger-Patzsch: Schubert & Salzer - Textile machinery - Ingolstadt |
|  | Albert Renger-Patzsch: The rise of Modernism |
|  | Albert Renger-Patzsch: Trees |
| |
All photographs by this photographer
The following books are useful starting points to obtain brief biographies but they are not substitutes for the monographs on individual photographers. |
• Beaton, Cecil & Buckland, Gail 1975 The Magic Eye: The Genius of Photography from 1839 to the Present Day (Boston and Toronto: Little, Brown & Company) p.198 [Useful short biographies with personal asides and one or more example images.]
• Capa, Cornell (ed.) 1984 The International Center of Photography: Encyclopedia of Photography (New York, Crown Publishers, Inc. - A Pound Press Book) p.428-429
• Fernandez, Horacio (ed.) 2000 Fotografía Pública: Photography in Print 1919-1939 (Aldeasa) p.203-205 [This Spanish exhibition catalogue is one of the best sources for illustrations of photomontage and book design for the period between the two World Wars.]
• Witkin, Lee D. and Barbara London 1979 The Photograph Collector’s Guide (London: Secker and Warburg) p.220-221 [Long out of print but an essential reference work - the good news is that a new edition is in preparation.]
|
If there is an analysis of a single photograph or a useful self portrait I will highlight it here. |
| "In photography one should surely proceed from essence of the object and attempt to represent it with photographic terms alone." |
|
