Renger-Patzsch, Albert. Untitled 12. Albert Renger-Patzsch 1897 – 1966.

The Albert Renger-Patzsch Collection at the Friends of Photography, which issued this softcover book in 1977. 28 plates by Renger-Patzsch, mostly landscapes with one portrait.  Other photos include portrait of Renger-Patzsch and one with Ansel Adams and Rosario Mazzeo by Beaumont Newhall. Also includes essay, "Picking Winners," by Henry Holmes Smith and a chronology of exhibits at the Friends, 1967–1977, which reads like a who's who in photography. A few loose pages as common with this perfect bound book. Slight shelf wear. Not issued with ISBN number.  Summary:

Untitled 12: Albert Renger-Patzsch 1897–1966 (1977) is a significant monograph published by the Friends of Photography as part of their influential "Untitled" series. This volume serves as a critical re-examination of the German photographer who was the leading figure of the New Objectivity (Neue Sachlichkeit) movement in the 1920s and 30s.

Core Philosophy: The New Objectivity

The book explores Renger-Patzsch’s unwavering commitment to "straight" photography. He rejected the soft-focus, painterly style of Pictorialism in favor of:

• Technical Precision: Using the camera to reveal the essence of an object through sharp focus and extreme clarity.

• Materiality: A fascination with the surface textures of the world—whether the skin of a cactus, the weave of a fabric, or the cold steel of a machine.

• Democratic Vision: The belief that a common household item was as worthy of photographic study as a grand cathedral.

Key Themes and Imagery

1. The Intersection of Nature and Industry

The monograph highlights Renger-Patzsch’s ability to find similar geometric patterns in both the natural and man-made worlds.

• Botanical Studies: Close-ups of plants that emphasize their structural, almost architectural, rigidity.

• Industrial Landscapes: Images of factories, smokestacks, and mass-produced glass jars that treat industrial subjects with the same reverence usually reserved for nature.

2. "The World is Beautiful" (Die Welt ist schön)

The book references his seminal 1928 work, illustrating his "archival" approach to the world. By stripping away sentimentalism and human narrative, Renger-Patzsch allowed the objects to speak for themselves through their own formal properties.

Editorial Context: The "Untitled" Series

As the twelfth installment in the Untitled series, this volume was instrumental in introducing (or re-introducing) American audiences to the rigors of European modernism. It includes a scholarly essay that places Renger-Patzsch’s work in the context of the Weimar Republic’s intellectual climate and his lasting influence on the "New Topographics" and industrial photographers who followed.

Summary Takeaway

Untitled 12 is a concise tribute to the "logic of the eye." It presents Renger-Patzsch not merely as a documentarian, but as a philosopher-craftsman who used the camera to prove that the modern world—in all its mechanical and organic complexity—possesses an inherent, structural beauty that only the lens can fully uncover.

Biographical Summary

Albert Renger-Patzsch (1897–1966) was a seminal German photographer and a foundational figure in the Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity) movement, renowned for his rigorous, sharp-focus documentation of natural and manufactured forms. Born in Würzburg, Germany, Renger-Patzsch began taking photographs as a teenager and studied chemistry at the Technical University of Dresden before abandoning academia in the early 1920s to pursue press photography and commercial design. Reacting strongly against the soft-focus, painterly conventions of Pictorialism, he championed the medium’s intrinsic technical capacity to render unvarnished, objective detail. His landmark 1928 monograph, Die Welt ist schön (The World Is Beautiful), featured 100 precise, tightly cropped black-and-white studies of botanical specimens, industrial machinery, mass-produced items, and architectural motifs, establishing a visual paradigm that celebrated structural geometry and mechanical repetition. During the Interwar period, he operated a studio in Essen documenting Ruhr Valley industrial infrastructure, and though thousands of his archive negatives were destroyed during World War II aerial bombardments, he relocated to Wamel to produce quiet, expansive landscape studies until his death. Renger-Patzsch’s uncompromising belief in photographic realism profoundly influenced modern straight photography, directly shaping the visual philosophy of later masters such as Bernd and Hilla Becher.