Abstract

Albert Renger-Patzsch's contribution to the avant-garde photography of the 1920s and early 1930s established his leading role in the history of the medium. Die Welt is Schon or The World is Beautiful became of the most influential photographic books ever. His cool, clinical pictures, with their details of technical apparatus, industrial products and natural organisms, were models of a new artistic vision, combining objectivity and order with beauty and technology. This volume accompanies a major retrospective at the Sprengel Museum in Hanover celebrating the centenary of the innovative artist. It is edited by the founders and directors of the Albert Renger-Patzsch Archive in Cologne and contains the much publicized Icons of New Objectivity - the famous still lives of Jena glass, or rows of flat irons at a shoe factory - and lesser known pictures of landscapes and architecture, a selection of city portraits and photographic studies of trees and stones.