Reconsidering New Objectivity: Albert Renger-Patzsch and Die

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RECONSIDERING NEW OBJECTIVITY: ALBERT RENGER-PATZSCH AND DIE

WELT IST SCHÖN

MARGARET E. HANKEL

(Under the Direction of NELL ANDREW)

ABSTRACT

In December of 1928, the Munich-based publisher, Kurt Wolff released a book

with a new concept: a collection of one-hundred black and white photographs by Albert

Renger-Patzsch. Titled Die Welt ist schön, the book presented a remarkable diversity of

subjects visually unified by Renger-Patzsch’s straight-forward aesthetic. While widely

praised at the time of its release, the book exists in relative obscurity today. Its legacy

was cemented by the negative criticism it received in two of Walter Benjamin’s essays,

“Little History of Photography” (1931) and “The Author as Producer” (1934). This paper reexamines the book in within the context of its reception, reconsidering the book’s legacy and its ties to the New Objectivity movement in Weimar.

INDEX WORDS: Albert Renger-Patzsch, Die Welt ist schön, Photography, New

Objectivity, Sachlichkeit, New Vision, Painting Photography

Film, Walter Benjamin, Lázsló Moholy-Nagy

RECONSIDERING NEW OBJECTIVITY: ALBERT RENGER-PATZSCH AND DIE

WELT IST SCHÖN

MARGARET HANKEL

BA, Columbia College Chicago, 2009

A Thesis Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of The University of Georgia in Partial

Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree

MASTER OF ARTS

ATHENS, GEORGIA

2017

Margaret E. Hankel

RECONSIDERING NEW OBJECTIVITY: ALBERT RENGER-PATZSCH AND DIE

WELT IST SCHÖN

MARGARET E. HANKEL

Major Professor: Nell Andrew Committee: Alisa Luxenberg Janice Simon

Electronic Version Approved:

Suzanne Barbour Dean of the Graduate School The University of Georgia May 2017

DEDICATION

For my mother and father

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Many thanks to those who have read this work in its various stages of completion: to my advisor, Nell Andrew, whose kind and sage guidance made this project possible, to my committee members Janice Simon and Alisa Luxenberg, to Isabelle Wallace, and to my colleague, Erin McClenathan.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ...... v

LIST OF FIGURES ...... vii

RECONSIDERING NEW OBJECTIVITY: ALBERT RENGER-PATZSCH AND DIE

WELT IST SCHÖN ...... 1

BIBLIOGRAPHY ...... 28

APPENDICES

A Figures...... 33

vii

LIST OF FIGURES

Page

Figure 1: Die Welt ist schön, 100 photographic records by Albert Renger-Patzsch, edited

and introduced by Carl Georg Heise, published by Kurt Wolff Verlag, 1928 .....33

Figure 2: Plate 10, Tropische Orchid, in Die Welt ist schön, 1928 ...... 34

Figure 3: Plate 36, Weinbergweg. Ellerer Kapley, in Die Welt ist schön, 1928 ...... 35

Figure 4: Plate 93, Bügeleisern für Schuhfabrikation. Fagus-Werk Benscheidt in Alfred,

in Die Welt ist schön, 1928 ...... 36

Figure 5: Plate 56, Kaffee Hag. Plakatentwurf, in Die Welt ist schön, 1928 ...... 37

Figure 6: Plate 27, Natterkopf, in Die Welt ist schön, 1928 ...... 38

Figure 7: Plate 60, Blick in den Chor des Lübecker Doms, in Die Welt ist schön, 1928 ..39

Figure 8: Karl Blossfeldt, Adiantum Pedatum, ca. 1928 ...... 40

Figure 9: August Sander, Bricklayer, 1928, Gelatin silver print ...... 41

Figure 10: Lázsló Moholy-Nagy, Berlin Radio Tower, 1928, Gelatin silver print ...... 42

Figure 11: Moholy-Nagy, From the Radio Tower, Berlin, 1928. Gelatin silver print ...... 43

Figure 12: Moholy-Nagy, Fotogramm, 1926. Gelatin silver print ...... 44

Figure 13: Comparison of Plate 38 and Plate 50 in Die Welt ist schön, 1928 ...... 45

Figure 14: Comparison of Plate 4 and Plate 69 in Die Welt ist schön, 1928 ...... 46

Figure 15: Comparison of Plate 5 and Plate 6 in Die Welt ist schön, 1928 ...... 47

Figure 16: Cover of Die Welt ist schön, credited to Vordemberge-Gildewart, 1928 ...... 48

Figure 17: Cover of Die Welt ist schön with promotional sash ...... 49

viii

Figure 18: Installation view of Room 1 of the Film und Foto exhibition in Stuttgart,

Figure 19: Plate 52, Buchenscheite, in Die Welt ist schön, 1928 ...... 51

Figure 20: Plate 30, Schafherde, in Die Welt ist schön, 1928 ...... 52

Figure 21: Plate 51, Dachpfannenlager, in Die Welt ist schön, 1928 ...... 53

Figure 22: Plate 5 and Plate 6 as compared to the full negative image ...... 54

Figure 23: Comparison of Plate 8, Plate 67, and Plate 68 in Die Welt ist schön, 1928 ....55

Figure 24: Comparison of contact print of Kaimauer and Plate 29 in Die Welt ist schön,

1928 ...... 56

Figure 25: Pages 58-59 in Moholy-Nagy’s Painting Photography Film, 1967 edition ...57

Figure 26: Pages 56-57 and 88-89 in Moholy-Nagy’s Painting Photography Film, 1967

edition ...... 58

Figure 27: Pages 130-131 in Moholy-Nagy’s Painting Photography Film, 1967 ed...... 59

Figure 28: Moholy-Nagy, Untitled Photogram, 1925 ...... 60

RECONSIDERING NEW OBJECTIVITY: ALBERT RENGER-PATZSCH

AND DIE WELT IST SCHÖN

In December of 1928, the Munich-based publisher Kurt Wolff released a book with a new concept: the photographic essay.1 In this iteration, it was a collection of one hundred black and white photographs by a single photographer, Albert Renger-Patzsch, and edited by art historian Carl Georg Heise (fig. 1). Titled Die Welt ist schön (The World is

Beautiful), its pages were filled with images of the vast miscellanea of life: orchids and dirt roads, shoe irons and coffee beans, snakes and barrel-vaulted cathedrals (figs. 2-7).

Organized into categories like “Plants” or “Architecture,” Die Welt ist schön presented a diversity of subjects visually unified by Renger-Patzsch’s straight-forward aesthetic.

Strategically scheduled to appeal to holiday shoppers in the weeks preceding

Christmas, the book’s release was accompanied by an aggressive marketing campaign.

“The pleasure in looking has reawakened our impoverished Germany,” reads one such ad from December, “…This book with one hundred pictures . . . is something totally new and is the GIFT BOOK FOR EVERYBODY.”2 Critics, too, marveled at Die Welt ist schön. Renger-Patzsch’s ability to transform plants, machine parts, animals, and

1 For a discussion of the development of the photo-essay format in Weimar, see Daniel Magliow’s The Photography of Crisis: The Photo-Essays of Weimar Germany (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2012). 2 As cited in Ulrich Rüter, “The Reception of Albert Renger-Patzsch's Die Welt ist schön,” History of Photography 21, no. 3 (September 1997): 192.

buildings into abstract, geometric form was perceived as a revelation. Writer Kurt

Tucholsky described the book as “the best of the best.”3 Thomas Mann claimed it

realized the spiritualization of technology.4 “I would be unable to name any other work of

art by a living painter or sculptor that is comparable to this collection of work in its

impact, completeness, personality, and actuality,” wrote art historian Heinrich Schwarz.

“The book is a signal,” he claimed, “as it at long last propagates the liberation of

photography from the chains of painting.”5

Despite Die Welt ist schön’s wide reception and praise at the time of its release,

the book is relatively unknown today. Its forgotten legacy was cemented when it attracted

the negative criticism of Marxist philosopher Walter Benjamin several years after its

publication. In the essays “Little History of Photography” (1931) and “The Author as

Producer” (1934), Benjamin links Die Welt ist schön to the domain of bourgeois artistic

fetishism. Laced with anxiety, Benjamin’s essays were formed in reaction to an

overwhelming abundance of photographic media, made possible by advancements in

print technology. Uneasy with the proliferation of mass media and photography’s

capacity to impart political ideology, Benjamin concluded Die Welt ist schön was

“…unable to convey anything about a power station or cable factory other than, ‘What a

beautiful world!’”6 This characterization has since situated the work of Renger-Patzsch

3 Kurt Tucholsky (under the pseudonym Peter Panter), cited in Rüter, 192. 4 “The mechanization of the artistic… sounds like the decay and downfall of the soul. But what if the spirit yields to technology and, in the process of doing so, technology is itself spiritualized?” Thomas Mann, cited in Ibid., 193 5 Heinrich Schwarz, cited in Ibid., 192 6 Walter Benjamin, “The Author as Producer” in The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility, and Other Writings on Media, ed. Michael Jennings et al., trans. by E. F. N. Jephcott et al. (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2008), 86.

against the experimental, avant-garde work of his contemporaries, such as Bauhaus

photographer Lázsló Moholy-Nagy. Renger-Patzsch’s style of photography was

consequently labeled “New Objectivity” (Neue Sachlichkeit), while Moholy-Nagy’s

photography was labeled “New Vision” (Neues Sehen)—a term coined in his 1925 text,

Painting Photography Film.7 Ever since, the two have been regarded as the leading, but separate movements of the Weimar era.

For example, in a 2014 essay about the opening of the 1929 Film und Foto (Fifo)

exhibition in Stuttgart, photography critic and curator Francesco Zanot exploits the

differences between Renger-Patzsch and Moholy-Nagy to create a short-hand summation

of late Weimar photography. The aim of New Objectivity, according to Zanot, was

loosely defined by a direct approach to documentation: to use the camera as a recording

device, to “show things just as they were.”8 The frontal view of objects or people, as seen

in Renger-Patzsch’s Flat Irons for a Shoe Factory (Bügeleisen für Schuhfabrikation)

(1928) (fig. 4), Karl Blossfeldt's Adiantum Pedatum (1898-1926) (fig. 8) or August

Sander's Bricklayer’s Mate (1928) (fig. 9), are commonly regarded as a formula for New

Objectivity’s signature frankness. In the case of Renger-Patzsch, in particular, Zanot

argues, “The author vanished (his photographs, essentially, took themselves)…”9

Conversely, Zanot writes that New Vision was determined by an emphasis on the

7 In German, New Vision is translated to Neues Sehen as it appears in Painting Photography Film. 8 Zanot, 129. 9 Ibid., 131.

“process of transformation” made possible by photography’s unique attributes—oblique camera angles or the effects of distortion.10 One can observe these effects in the example of Moholy-Nagy’s extreme vantage point in the series of photographs taken from radio towers, for example, From the Radio Tower, Berlin (1928) or Berlin Radio Tower (1928)

(figs. 10-11), or in the manipulation of light in his untitled photograms (fig. 12).

Donald Kuspit, Michael Jennings, Carl Gelderloos, Pepper Stetler and other scholars have consistently argued for a revaluation of Benjamin’s criticism against

Renger-Patzsch.11 Benjamin’s brief critique of Die Welt ist schön rests heavily upon the book’s sentimental title and New Objectivity’s supposed claim to reportage. However, publisher Kurt Wolff, who wished to convey an optimistic message to the masses for the book’s Christmas-time release, chose the ultimate title, despite Renger-Patzsch’s protestations that it would lead to a misunderstanding of his work.12 As Hans Namuth first discovered, Renger-Patzsch preferred the far more pragmatic title of Die Dinge

(Things).13 In a 1930 letter to art historian Franz Roh, Renger-Patzsch derided his own

10 Zanot, 131. 11 Kuspit’s language is perhaps the harshest, describing Benjamin’s “savage attack” as “blind” and rife with “tunnel vision,” that “failed” to recognize the formal possibilities of Renger-Patzsch’s photographs. While I agree Benjamin overlooked Die Welt ist schön, Kuspit’s statements seem to be an overreaction. Benjamin's brief references to Renger-Patzsch hardly qualifies as a “savage attack.” Perhaps Kuspit’s reaction reflects the authority scholars have since assigned to Benjamin’s essays. Stetler calls the book a “scholarly blind- spot,” while Jennings, an English translator of the works of Benjamin, writes that “of all the major Weimar photographers, none has been so ill-served as Renger-Patzsch.” Kuspit, “Albert Renger-Patzsch: Joy Before the Object,” 7 & 66. Pepper Stetler, “The Value of Photography: Albert Renger-Patzsch’s Die Welt ist schön” in Stop Reading! Look! Modern Vision and the Weimar Photographic Book. (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2015), 61. See footnote 40 in Jennings, “Agriculture, Industry, and the Birth of the Photo-Essay,” 46. 12 Donald Kuspit, “Albert Renger-Patzsch: Joy Before the Object.” Aperture, no. 131 (Spring 1993): 7. 13 Hans Namuth. “Looking at Art of Albert Renger-Patzsch: The world is beautiful.” Artnews 80, (December 1981): 136-137.

book, distancing himself from it by describing it as a “visiting card…proof that he was

able to photograph.”14 Later, in 1937, he denied the romanticism of the book’s title

insisting he conceived of the book “less in the philosophical sense (as many falsely

concluded from the title) than in a pedagogical one: as an ABC book that could show

how one can achieve solutions to the dilemmas posed by images through purely

photographic means.”15

Die Welt ist schön is a curious object of study. While the book’s legacy has distanced New Objectivity and New Vision, the movements were, in fact, quite closely aligned. Instead of a movement interested in the documentary realism of photography, this paper argues Renger-Patzsch’s New Objectivity was motivated by an aesthetic ideal based upon the abstract visual effects of photography. The emphasis on photographic abstraction in Die Welt ist schön, complicates the traditional assumptions of New

Objectivity’s supposed claim to objective truth and, instead, allies Renger-Patzsch with

Moholy-Nagy and New Vision. Contrary to Zanot’s claim of authorlessness, Renger-

Patzsch’s attention to abstraction can be viewed as a deliberate attempt to assert his artistic authority. In fact, Renger-Patzsch and Moholy-Nagy can be linked by their determined effort to promote a new mode of photographic production in which authorial control was expressed specifically through the exploitation of photographic technology.

If scholars are consigned to dismiss Die Welt ist schön as Benjamin does, they fail to realize how central the book was to a complex discourse concerning mass communication

14 Albert Renger-Patzsch in a 1930 letter to art historian and Foto-Auge author, Franz Roh, cited in Kuspit, 7. 15 Albert Renger-Patzsch, cited in Michael Jennings, “Agriculture, Industry, and the Birth of the Photo- Essay in the Late Weimar Republic.” October no. 93 (Summer 2000): 50.

and printed media, photography’s evolving social role, and the pursuit of photographic

vision.

New Objectivity, a term used to describe the interwar movement in both

photography and painting, is perhaps most commonly associated with the latter medium.

Gardner’s canonical textbook cites painters Otto Dix, Georg Grosz, and Ernst Balach as

leaders of the movement in which they “depicted the horrors of [World War I] and

explored themes of death and transfiguration.”16 Art historian John Willet has more

helpfully defined the movement in painting through two branches: the Verists—a group

comprised of the war critics like Dix and Grosz—and the Classicists, such as Georg

Schrimpf or Carl Grossberg, whose purist return to order all but denies such violence.17

Neither Gardner nor Willet’s definitions make any reference to photography; however,

the Los Angeles County Museum of Art included both media in its 2015 exhibition in

which photographs of Renger-Patzsch, August Sander, Karl Blossfeldt and others

appeared alongside the paintings of Dix, Grosz, Schrimpf, and Grossberg.18

If New Objectivity is an ambiguous term, its translation is perhaps even more

slippery. In German, Neue Sachlichkeit, in addition to “new objectivity” can also mean

“new sobriety” or “new matter-of-factness.” To translate it literally, “sache,” meaning

16 Helen Gardner and Fred S. Kleiner, Gardner’s Art Through the Ages: A Global History, Volume II for the University of Georgia. (Mason, OH: Cengage Learning, 2013), 897. 17 John Willet, “Neue Sachlichkeit, objectivity, Verism, and the Magic Realists,” in Art and Politics in the Weimar Period: The New Sobriety, 1917-1933, (New York: Da Capo Press, 1996), 112. 18 See Stephanie Barron et. al. New Objectivity: Modern German Art in the Weimar Republic, 1919-1933, (Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 2015).

“thing,” makes Sachlichkeit, inelegantly, “thing-ly-ness.” The origin of the term is

frequently linked to the eponymous exhibition organized by Gustav Hartlaub, under the

guidance of Franz Roh, at the Kunsthalle Mannheim in 1925.19 The exhibition identified

a distinct shift in painting from the emotional intensity of Expressionism to a new stoic

realism following the closure of the first World War.

Within the realm of photography, New Objectivity is commonly understood to

share the same attitude of matter-of-factness and realism as in painting. Posed

antithetically to New Vision, New Objectivity is associated with the qualities of truth and

realism, while New Vision is associated with photographic abstraction and the unseen

world. In addition to Benjamin’s critique, Michael Jennings locates the source of this

distinction to Christopher Phillips’ 1989 anthology Photography in the Modern Era,

where the selection of essays pivots around a central debate of realism versus

experimental abstraction.20 While this debate indeed took place, its over-emphasis creates a false dichotomy that misrepresents the overlap and nuance between the two

movements.21

Die Welt ist schön is arguably less about providing documentary evidence of the

world’s beauty than it is about the abstraction that occurs when the world is perceived

19 Willet, 112. 20 See Christopher Phillips, Photography in the Modern Era: European Documents and Critical Writings, 1913-1940, (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1989), 79-210. 21 Francesco Zanot, “The Film and Foto Exhibition of 1929,” in Photoshow: Landmark Exhibitions That Defined the History of Photography, ed. Alessandra Mauro, (London: Thames & Hudson, 2014), 131.

8 through a monoptic lens and flattened into two-dimensional, monochromatic form.

Organized in eight sections, the book progresses from earthbound themes like “Plants,”

“Animals,” and “Landscapes,” to man-made subjects like “Architecture,” “Materials,” and “Technology,” to abstract concepts like “Varied World” and “Symbol.” The objects of Renger-Patzsch’s gaze are disparate and ranging, but any pairing of images could produce a union marked by an insistent fascination with the formal effects of photography. Take, for example, the pastoral mountaintop on plate 38, and a collection of wooden shoe forms on plate 50 (fig. 13). While the two subjects are entirely mismatched in their striking contrast between the organic and inorganic, one can draw visual similarities between the stacked arrangement of chunky shoe forms and the diagonal sweep of the rugged, rocky landscape, which almost seem to mimic one another.

Renger-Patzsch’s diverse subjects are visually linked by a common fascination with detail and pattern. In what is a hallmark of Renger-Patzsch’s style, objects typically appear isolated as a single unit, situated centrally against a neutral background and within a comfortable margin to the image’s edge, as seen in plate 4, Wine Grapes (Weintraube) or plate 69, Steamwheel (Dampfabstellrad einer 1000 P.S. Dampfmaschine. Hannover,

Continental-Werke) (fig. 14). Equalized in scale, Renger-Patzsch’s wine grapes and steam wheel function as formal studies in curvilinear, reflective surfaces: The plumpness of the grapes is matched by the oblong structures that support and surround the wheel.

The analogous impression of roundness and volume in each is reinforced by the similar tonal gradation conjured by a highly reflective surface texture.

Renger-Patzsch’s centralized composition is perhaps most pleasing in plants that demonstrate a radial growth pattern—as in the succulents on plates 5 and 6—whose leaves and petals swirl outward (fig. 15). A dizzying flatness, pushed to the surface of the picture plane, is formed by a closer crop and Renger-Patzsch’s reluctance to provide a penetrable recession into space. Despite the curling movement of the plant’s pattern of growth, however, the viewer’s eye remains anchored by the dense center, which lends a stability and point of focus amid this optical motion.

The marketing of Die Welt ist schön emphatically presented Renger-Patzsch as a new, modern master. The book’s original dust jacket, designed by artist Friedrich

Vordemberge-Gildewart, conveys a sense of clarity and precision while demonstrating the authority of the photographs therein (fig. 16). Emblazoned with a royal blue, all-caps, sans-serif typeface, the book’s title optically vibrates against a primary yellow background. The cover is simply divided into four quadrants, the top left and bottom right bearing Georgine and Glass, two close-ups of two unrelated objects linked formally by their geometry. The deliberate contrast of the natural versus the manmade not only stresses their unexpected formal similarities, but also the breadth of content within the book. The other two quadrants bear the subtitle in a yellow, sans-serif font against a white background. The tagline, significantly larger in size than the title, describes the book’s contents: not just any photographs, but “100 RENGER FOTOS.” The “100,” which appears in its own quadrant, dominates the cover and impresses upon the viewer its enormous quantity, while the forceful qualification of “Renger Fotos” simultaneously stresses the authority of the photographer.

Die Welt ist schön was displayed with a promotional overwrap covering the

outside jacket that praised Renger-Patzsch’s ability to reveal the unseen world through

photographic vision. One such sash extends Renger-Patzsch’s authority by specifically

labeling him a master: “Do you photograph? Here is your master.”22 This assertion is

followed with a brief pronouncement from French essayist and art historian Romain

Rolland, “These pictures are gorgeous and a revelation.”23 The ad statements make clear

that only through the act of seeing is this revelation possible, for another sales cover that

features a quotation from Thomas Mann begins with, “Exciting and inspiring to anyone

with eyes!”24 and finishes with Mann’s, “An astounding picture book” (fig. 17).25

Renger-Patzsch’s ability to use the camera to draw formal similarities across dissimilar things delighted the editor and author of the book’s introduction, Carl Georg

Heise, the director of the Museum of Art and Cultural History in Lübeck who was instrumental in elevating Renger-Patzsch’s artistic status.26 Heise, who was actively

involved in the book’s production, extends the enthusiasm of the cover and

simultaneously declares the superiority of Renger-Patzsch’s particular brand of

photography.27 This superiority is made most clear in Heise’s claims of the universality of Renger-Patzsch’s work:

22 “Fotografieren Sie? Hier ist Ihr Meister.” Author’s translation. 23 “Diese Bilder sind prachtvoll und eine Offenbarung.” Author’s translation. 24 “Aufregend und begeisternd für jeden, der Augen hat!” Author’s translation. 25 “…ein erstaunliches Bilder-buch.” Author’s translation. 26 According to Kuspit, Renger-Patzsch and Heise first met in the mid-1920s through Hanns Krenz, the business director of the Kestner Gesellschaft in Hannover who organized an exhibition of Renger-Patzsch’s work in 1925 at the Folkwang Archives in Hagen. Heise quickly became a promoter of Renger-Patzsch’s work, facilitating his first one-man exhibition at the Benhaus in 1927, and, that same year, convincing Kurt Wolff to publish Die Welt ist schön. Heise would continue to promote Renger-Patzsch’s work following Die Welt ist schön. He is additionally responsible for coordinating a group show at the Société Française de Photographie in Paris’s Rue Clichy in which Renger-Patzsch received his first critical acclaim from writer Kurt Tucholsky. Kuspit, 5. 27 For further information about the extent of Heise’s involvement with the production, see Stetler, 71.

Photographs, however, assuming that they are as vital, bold, and creative as those of Albert Renger-Patzsch, have the ability of enriching a far larger circle of people, who may be entirely different from each other, and uniting them in an enthusiasm similar to that aroused by the painting of our time.28

Heise lifts Renger-Patzsch to a status superior to other photographers and capable of

transcending social or intellectual divides. Romain’s earlier proclamation of Renger-

Patzsch as a “Meister” is continued further by Heise, who asserts Renger-Patzsch’s skill

by comparing the spiritual totality of his landscapes to earlier artistic masters like Caspar

David Friedrich. The precision and detailing of Renger-Patzsch’s photographs are further

compared to the paintings of Anthony Van Dyck. Heise waxes lyrical when he likens

Renger-Patzsch’s creative vision to Albrecht Dürer’s ability to “‘wrench’ hidden beauty”

from any object.21

Effectively securing Renger-Patsch's legacy as a photographer of objectivity,

Heise makes frequent references to the concept (using terms like “Sachlichkeit,” or

“Objectivität des Apparates”) and to truth or reality (“Wirklichkeit”) that one begins to wonder if the notion of Sachlichkeit is inseparable from Renger-Patzsch himself. But what is meant by Heise’s “objective reality”? According to Heise, objective photography rejects the so-called “ennobling processes,” such as previous gum- or oil-based printing techniques painted on by brush in order to create soft, painterly effects not captured on the original negative image.29 For well-known Pictorialists like Heinrich Kühn, Robert

Demachy, Edward Steichen, or Anne Brigman, this painterly texture—coupled with

28 Carl Georg Heise, “The World is Beautiful” in Albert Renger-Patzsch: 100 Photographs 1928 (Köln: Schürmann & Kicken Books, 1979), 9. 29 “Das Bedenkliche liegt im Nachahmen der künstlerischen Handschrift durch die sog. ‘Edeldruckverfahren…’” Author’s translation. Carl Georg Heise, introduction to Die Welt ist schön, (Munich: Kurt Wolff Verlag, 1928), 9.

traditional subjects like the female nude or the landscape—formally linked photography

to painting and legitimized the medium as fine art. Renger-Patzsch’s silver-based

prints—sharply focused and closely cropped—were a significant departure from an

earlier photography that valued poetic ambiguity over clarity and precision. Heise’s

fascination with objectivity is, thus, a reaction to an emerging photographic style

unobscured by the special effects of surface manipulation and non-photographic

materials.

Renger-Patzsch was certainly not the first to reject the conventions of

Pictorialism. Gum and oil-based printing permitted the manual manipulation of

photographic imagery, and while its painterly effects initially helped elevate photography

as an artistic media, it had become so popular with amateurs by the 1910s that it

prompted a backlash by some photographers. As early as 1917, Paul Strand published an

essay in Camera Work wherein he argued for a new aesthetic approach to photography

rooted in the qualities specific to the medium:

The full potential power of every medium is dependent upon the purity of its use, and all attempts at mixture end in such dead things as the color- etching, the photographic painting, and in photography, the gum-print, oil- print, etc., in which the introduction of handwork and manipulation is merely the expression of an impotent desire to paint. It is this very lack of understanding and respect for their material, on the part of the photographers themselves which directly accounts for the consequent lack of respect on the part of the intelligent public and the notion that photography is but a poor excuse for an inability to do anything else. The photographer’s problem therefore, is to see clearly the limitations and at the same time the potential qualities of his medium, for it is precisely here that honesty no less than intensity of vision, is the prerequisite of a living expression.30

30 Paul Strand, “Photography” from “Camera Work 1917, Number 49/50,” in Camera Work: A Critical Anthology, ed. Jonathan Green. (Millerton, NY: Aperture Inc., 1973), 326-327.

By the late 1920s, Strand’s ideas had firmly taken hold amongst the international avant-

garde, and, with the June 1929 opening of the international Film und Foto exhibition

organized by the Deutsche Werkbund, critics and photographers alike announced

photography’s independence from painting. In the introductory essay for the exhibition's

catalog, organizer Gustav Stotz declared:

Indeed, this exhibition is consciously and intentionally in sharp opposition to this increasingly popular concept still customary, as if photo-artistic effect can be achieved only through softness, blurriness, and particularly, manually overworked images. On the contrary! The basis of any true photographic accomplishment is constituted by the object, that small lens, with which all things can be seized with clarity, sharpness, and precision…”31

The exhibition, which featured the works of photographers from several countries,

prominently featured the work of Moholy-Nagy, who received a separate gallery in

which to display his photographs. Moholy-Nagy was also granted the opportunity to

curate both the introductory gallery and the German section of the show. The

introductory room featured an unprecedented inclusion of anonymous press and scientific

photographs—valued for their lack of conventions—juxtaposed with artistic photographs

(fig. 18). The selection of images in the exhibition ultimately outlined the photographer’s

ability to exploit the camera to see beyond traditional pictorial vision. The close crop, the

telescopic lens, the photogram, all of which were featured in abundance, disrupted the

linear, Albertian perspective photography was supposedly meant to actualize. While

scholars have disagreed over Renger-Patzsch’s participation in Film und Foto, the

31 Gustav Stotz, “Die Ausstellung” in Salon to Biennial: Exhibitions That Made Art History, ed. Phaidon editors and Bruce Altshuler, (London: Phaidon, 2008), 226-227.

14 exhibition catalog lists fourteen prints by him in the German section of the show, suggesting Renger-Patzsch was essential to illustrating Film und Foto’s aims.32

Challenging the common antagonistic assumptions of New Objectivity and New

Vision, Renger-Patzsch and Moholy-Nagy were exhibited together in this landmark exhibition of modern photography. Furthermore, Renger-Patzsch’s impulse towards abstraction most closely aligns him with Moholy-Nagy. 33 On plate 52 of Die Welt ist schön, for example, the camera renders abstract each cross-section of wood against the near-black background, forming an incongruous grid of pastiche, geometric form (fig.

19). A flock of sheep, on plate 30, morph into a rolling landscape of shadowy, shapely

32 There is some inconsistency in the scholarship regarding Renger-Patzsch’s inclusion in the Film und Foto exhibition. Stetler writes in “The Value of Photography” that his work was “conspicuously absent” and “overlooked for inclusion” in the show, while Zanot writes he was well-represented. The exhibition catalog lists fourteen of Renger-Patzsch’s images, strongly suggesting he was, in fact, included. It cannot be determined with any exactitude, however, which of Renger-Patzsch’s photographs were exhibited at Film und Foto. The catalog’s checklist is largely unillustrated, containing only twenty-three images (none by Renger-Patzsch) of the estimated one-thousand photographs exhibited. The few surviving photographs of the installation, which only provide very limited views, do not turn up any Renger-Patzsch images either. It was not unusual for the title of photographs to change, and without photographic documentation, one can only speculate at the content included. The Renger-Patzsch photographs are listed in the catalog as follows: Poppse Strumpffabrik Schocken, Treppenhaus i.d. Kohelwäsche der Zeche Recklinghausen, Rohstrumpflager der Strumpffabrik Schocken, Teichrosen, Sailbahnkurve, Kaffee Hag, Reklame, Lübeck, Hochofenwerk 1, Hochofenwerk 2, Stoff, Agave, Nockenwelle einer 1000 P.S. Dampfmaschine, Gläser, Treppe vom Zwinger in Dresden. Renger-Patzsch photographed similar subjects repeatedly and titles like Lübeck could reference dozens of photographs he made there. Agave could potentially reference plates 7 or 99 in Die Welt ist schön, or, perhaps, another not included in the book. The two Hochofenwerk could reference plates 74 and 75, although neither images directly portray a furnace. While there are two references to Strumpffabrik, it seems more likely that Rohstrumpflager der Strumpffabrik Schochken is plate 58. Although titled differently, Teichrosen could perhaps refer to plate 39, which also bears lily pads. It also seems possible that Kaffee Hag, Agave, Treppe vom Zwinger in Dresden, Sailbahnkurve, Stoff, and Gläser correspond to plates 56, 7, 95, 70, 57 and 53, respectively. The photograph, Heterotrichum macrodum on plate 2, while not listed on the exhibition checklist, does appear in Franz Roh and Jan Tschischold’s Foto-Auge. While the publication is related to the exhibition, it cannot, however, be read as a checklist for the show. See Stetler, “The Value of Photography,” 59 and Zanot, “The Film und Foto Exhibition of 1929,” 137. For photographs of the installation of the Film und Foto exhibition, see Altshuler, Salon to Biennial, 217-236, or Museum of Modern Art, “Internationale Ausstellung des Deutschen Werkbunds Film und Foto (FiFo) at Städtische Ausstellungshallen,” Museum of Modern Art. Accessed December 3, 2016, https://www.moma.org/interactives/objectphoto/exhibitions/5.html 33 Paul Strand first wrote a treatise outlining what would become known as “straight photography” in 1917. See Paul Strand, “Photography,” 326-327.

heaps (fig. 20). On plate 51, stacks of roofing tile —which look more like etching, as if

each line were scrawled onto a black background—would be virtually unrecognizable

were it not for the distinguishable brick road (fig. 21). The mass appeal of Renger-

Patzsch’s photographs likely derived from their retention of the real world; while still

grounded in reality, the formal playfulness of Die Welt ist schön lacked the opacity of

more highly abstracted images. It is revealing that Renger-Patzsch initially conceived of

Die Welt ist schön as a didactic “ABC book,” meant to convey the formal effects of

photography; by preserving recognizable imagery, Renger-Patzsch illustrates the moment

of fissure between photographic representation and abstraction.

Consider Adder’s Head on plate 27 (fig. 6), where representation and abstraction

ambiguously converge. The subject of the photograph is immediately recognizable—

almost terrifyingly so—as a snake. Its single black eye confronts the viewer, piercing

through the mass of scales that otherwise fill the frame. Highlights from a harsh and frontal light source are reflected in the snake’s waxy skin, illuminating every sinuous detail on which the viewer is forced to fixate. Renger-Patzsch leaves no hint of a physical

setting; the snake fills the frame to the point that horror vacui transforms the natural pattern of the snake’s skin into decorative form. Stare at the image longer, and the snake’s body becomes almost hypnotic; the viewer’s eye is drawn to the top of the frame, and like arrows, scales direct the eye down and around and towards the center. This cyclical composition enables the viewer’s eye to fall into a perpetual loop. In its tendency towards flatness and abstraction—achieved through harsh lighting and the closely

cropped composition—Adder's Head is, deliberately, less about the snake than an

unconventional view of one.

Thomas Janzen discovered that to aid in this abstraction, Renger-Patzsch

deliberately cropped many more—if not most—of his images in an effort to draw out

specific formal characteristics.34 By abstaining from the manual effects and flourishes of printmaking favored by the Pictorialists, Renger-Patzsch’s artistic emphasis was placed on the act of composition. The original negative images of plates 5 and 6, for example, show the outer edges of the plant, which undermine the flatness and optical motion of the close crop (fig. 22). Janzen also discovered cropping on plates 8, 67, 68, and 49 (the only image of which he provides a reproduction) (fig. 23-24). The final compositions in the latter two, especially, appear to draw the viewer’s focus to the heightened contrast between shadow and the illuminated ripples of water, which appear more like scribbles of pen and ink than water itself.

Renger-Patzsch’s tendency towards photographic abstraction could just as easily be argued to fit within the heading New Vision. In Painting Photography Film, the text in which New Vision is defined, Moholy-Nagy lauded the optics and technology unique to photography, praising the camera’s ability to make visible what the eye cannot naturally

perceive:

34 Thomas Janzen, “Albert Renger-Patzsch’s Early Work: Object and Abstraction” in History of Photography 21, no. 3 (September 1997): 183-184. Many of the glass plate negatives from Renger- Patzsch’s earliest photographic project, Die Welt der Pflanze (The World of Plants) published by Auriga- Verlag in 1924, also reveal extraneous details left out in Die Welt ist schön.

[Photography makes] visible existences which cannot be perceived or taken in by our optical instrument, the eye… The view from above, from below, the oblique view…[the] secret of their effect is that the photographic camera reproduces the purely optical and therefore shows the optically true distortions, deformations, foreshortenings, etc….35

As Moholy-Nagy defined photography’s potential as a prosthetic aid to vision, he also defined photography’s claim to objective reality—a claim that echoes Strand’s, but precedes Heise’s:

Thus in the photographic camera we have the most reliable aid to a beginning of objective vision. Everyone will be compelled to see that which is optically true, is explicable in its own terms, is objective, before he can arrive at any possible subjective position. This will abolish that pictorial and imaginative association pattern which has remained unsuperseded [sic] for centuries and which has been stamped upon our vision by great individual painters.36

Moholy-Nagy illustrated these effects with over eighty pages of photographs that appear

in the book’s appendix. His own images, In the sand or Balcony, for example,

demonstrate the flattening effects of distortion when subjects are photographed from

directly above or below (fig. 25). In a move that belies the now canonical separation of

the two photographers, Moholy-Nagy also used Renger-Patzsch’s photographs in the

appendix, not only endorsing Renger-Patzsch’s work, but defining New Vision through

him. Moholy-Nagy included three of Renger-Patzsch’s images: one of a factory chimney

photographed from an oblique angle and demonstrating, according to Moholy-Nagy, the

“appearance of brute strength,”37 and two close-ups of cacti, one of which appears on

plate 8 in Die Welt ist schön (fig. 26).38 He is one of the few artistic photographers

35 László Moholy-Nagy, Painting Photography Film. (London: Lund Humphries, 1969), 28. 36 Moholy-Nagy, Painting Photography Film, 28. 37 The full caption reads: “Animalisch wirkende Kraft eines Fabrikschornsteines.” Author’s translation. 38 Moholy-Nagy, 57.

featured by Moholy-Nagy; located on pages 57, 88, and 89, respectively, Renger-

Patzsch’s images were situated within a broader selection of anonymous press and

scientific photographs, including pictures of outer-space, x-rays, tesla currents, and

microscopic views of a head louse— all selected to demonstrate photography’s ability to

expand human vision.39 Renger-Patzsch’s chimney appears a second time in the book in

Moholy-Nagy’s visual screenplay for the unproduced film, Dynamic of a Great City (fig.

27).40

Renger-Patzsch’s photographs in Die Welt ist schön provide an opportunity for

the reader not to observe a catalog of the things of the world, but rather to marvel at every

object’s subtle abstraction and transformation into geometric form. One might consider

the same visual aim presented more overtly in Moholy-Nagy’s untitled photogram from

1925 (fig. 28): On a plain, black field rest several ovular masses that read vaguely white

and vary in opacity.41 While it is nearly impossible to identify the objects based on visual analysis alone, the coil-shaped figure appears to have some height to it; varying shades of white and gray suggest some portion of the object is more distant from the photographic paper than the others. Unlike Renger-Patzsch’s photographs, the objects chosen by

Moholy-Nagy in this photogram are virtually unrecognizable. The impulse to identify these objects is strong, for the assumption is—as with all photographs—that these objects do, in fact, exist in time and space. Moholy-Nagy denies the viewer the opportunity to

39 Moholy-Nagy also includes a photograph by Alfred Stieglitz, citing it—negatively—as an example of the “triumph of Impressionism or photography misunderstood.” Moholy-Nagy, 49. 40 The factory chimney was a common subject of modernist photographers ranging from Germain Krull to Edward Weston. Smokestacks were even a motif in Dziga Vertov’s Man with the Movie Camera, which featured a shot remarkably similar to Renger-Patzsch’s as it appears in Painting Photography Film. 41 The photogram, technically a negative, produces black when exposed to light, and degrees of white and gray when obstructed by an object.

make any such identification, however; he instead forces the viewer to revel at the degree

of distortion with which he has rendered objects of the real world, objects that have been

reduced, instead, to pure form.

For both Moholy-Nagy and Renger-Patzsch, different approaches to abstracting

the photographic image became a means to assert their artistic authority. Moholy-Nagy

described his approach as a manipulation of photography’s most basic ingredient—

light.42 For Renger-Patzsch, it was technical erudition. In a 1925 essay titled, “Heretical

Thoughts on Artistic Photography,” Renger-Patzsch lambasts the painterly processes:

How amazed both the professional and the layman would be, if the board of examiners for the next art exhibition of photographs would demand that a contact print on gaslight or celluloid paper taken from the unmanipulated negative had to hang next to the submitted ‘ennobled print’! I think we would be ashamed of ourselves.43

Renger-Patzsch then challenges photographers to instead produce “photographs that look

like photographs.”44 If one is to suggest a remedy to the “ennobling” processes, however,

the artistic integrity of photography must then be placed elsewhere. For Renger-Patzsch,

this source of integrity lied in technical mastery. “The ambitious photographer,” he

writes, “should therefore use all means to gain control of his equipment, and then most of

his work would be deliberate successes and his activity would no longer be subjected to

42 “This course leads to possibilities of light-composition, in which light must be sovereignly handled as a new creative means, like colour in painting and sound in music.” (Bolding original to the text). Moholy- Nagy, 32. 43 Renger-Patzsch, “Heretical Thoughts on Artistic Photography,” trans. Virginia Heckert, History of Photography, (September 1997): 180. 44 Renger-Patzsch, “Heretical Thoughts on Artistic Photography,” 180.

chance.”45 The art of photography, for Renger-Patzsch, was not on the emphasis of the

special effects of printing, but rather in a stringent mastery of photographic technology.

Moholy-Nagy and Renger-Patzsch shared a unified aim in which, by embracing

the technology and limitations of the medium, photography provided a new mode of

seeing. While concordant in their formalistic embrace of the medium and its ability to

reveal what human vision could not, they differed on specific aspects of photographic

authorship, such as the use of chance. While Moholy-Nagy embraced the uncertainty of

photograms, spontaneity and chance experimentation undermined Renger-Patzsch’s call

for a controlled use of the camera. A photographer enraptured with the beauty of a

mountainside, he writes, must not get carried away and produce a bad exposure in the

haste of the moment:

The serious amateur photographer must not allow himself to surrender to that atmosphere when he works; instead, he must negate the ozone which makes him light-headed. He must not allow himself to see colours, to be caressed by the spring wind; he must see with one eye, because the camera with a single-lens gives no sense of plasticity.

To Renger-Patzsch, while the photographer will always remember the beautiful,

mountainside day as it was, an image with an overexposed sky and a “black clump which

might depict a forest” does not convey this beauty in a photograph.46 In what is possibly the most polarizing comment of the essay, Renger-Patzsch then calls this type of offensive, high-contrast photograph a “photogram.”47

45 Renger-Patzsch, 180. 46 Ibid. 47 Ibid.

In another instance of their departure, in an oft-quoted essay titled “Boom Times,”

published in bauhaus magazine in 1929, Renger-Patzsch criticized the Film und Foto

exhibition in a thinly veiled strike against Moholy-Nagy:

Instead, it was a random heap of photos with only one common denominator: their mediocrity. In place of quality, quantity… The recipe for success shoot from above or below…Take pictures at night, underexposure has the most interesting effects. And then: let chance work for you, it’ll do the job. That’s how modern photos are made…48

Renger-Patzsch’s dismissal of the exhibition has been mistakenly misinterpreted as his own indignation at being excluded from the show.49 As previously stated he was, in fact, among those exhibiting works at Film und Foto. The “recipe for success” Renger-Patzsch criticizes is, in fact, his own; the entirety of Die Welt ist schön particularly, demonstrates an unequivocal curiosity of the various effects of the camera. Renger-Patzsch’s adverse reaction was, arguably, instead to the suggestion that photographs be made by relinquishing authorial control to chance or accident. The unprecedented inclusion of anonymous press and scientific photographs suggested anyone could make them, and their mass quantity prompted a fear of photography (and the photographic author’s) potential devaluation. To be clear, Renger-Patzsch takes issue not with the “recipe” itself, but rather with the invitation to technical indifference that threated photographic authorship.

To neatly summarize, the distinctions between New Objectivity and New Vision blur around the circumstance that, when faced with the technical limitations of the

48 Albert Renger-Patzsch and Ernö Kallai, “Post-script to Photo-Inflation/Boom Times,” in Photography in the Modern Era: European Documents and Critical Writings, 1913-1940, ed. by Christopher Phillips, trans. Joel Agee (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1989), 141. 49 See Stetler, “The Value of Photography,” 59.

medium, a new mode of photographic authorship emerges. It is in extended conclusion

that I entertain a final question: What were the repercussions of such a shift in

photographic production—a shift that privileges technical command over manual

manipulation?

The “heresy” within the title of Renger-Patzsch’s 1925 essay rests on the implied

claim that artistic integrity could be transferred from a manual mode of production to a

technological one. To reject the “ennobling processes,” which resemble the effects of

brushwork, is to eliminate the visible presence of the artist’s own hand; the artistic

photograph no longer bears the physical trace of the artist, but the artist is instead

mediated through technical equipment. With the proscription against certain special

effects in printing, the creative act rested solely on the photographer’s ability to

reconfigure the pre-existing signs and symbols of the world. In this regard, one could say

photography’s artistic paradigm shifted from that of painting, to a medium more akin to

writing. In the essay, “The Photographic Conditions of Surrealism,” Rosalind Krauss

links photography to writing by relying on Jacques Derrida’s concept of spacing—a

requirement of signification.50 For Krauss, the act of framing itself marks the intervention

of the photographer. “The frame,” she writes, “announces the camera’s ability to find and

isolate what we could call the world’s constant writing of erotic symbols, its ceaseless

automatism.”51 Photographic abstraction—achieved, by Renger-Patzsch, precisely through the judicious use of cropping—highlights the act of reconfiguration and, in so doing, locates the action of the photographer.

50 Rosalind Krauss, “The Photographic Conditions of Surrealism,” October 19 (1981): 3-34. 51 Ibid., 31.

One might even consider Weimar’s proclivity towards the book and essay format

a symptom of this shift in photographic production so dependent on reconfiguration, for

the boundaries between photography and writing blurred in other ways in Weimar. As

photography’s likeness to painting diminished, photography suddenly occupied spaces

previously reserved exclusively for writing. As Daniel Magliow and Stetler have

remarked, technological advances in image reproduction induced a distribution of

photographic material so intense, it prompted essays such as Ernö Kallai’s 1929 “Photo-

Inflation” and Johannes Molzahn’s 1928 “Stop Reading! Look!”52 In an essay about

photography in advertising, Moholy-Nagy wrote, “Not writing, but rather the photo-

ignorant will be the illiterate of the future.”53 While the prospect of photography

supplanting writing enacted a sense of dread in critics like Benjamin, for others, this

phenomenon presented new narrative possibilities for visual artists.54 Although the

photographic book has become ubiquitous today, it was an emerging genre—invented

specifically in Weimar—in 1928. On the heels of Die Welt ist schön, early Weimar books

of photography included Karl Blossfeldt’s Urformen der Kunst (1928), August Sander’s

Antlitz der Zeit (1929), Werner Gräff’s Es Kommt der neue Fotograf! (1929) and Jan

Tschischold and Franz Roh’s Foto-Auge (1929). While the photographic book has only

recently become a source of scholarly interest, Stetler and Magliow are among those to

examine books of photography as unified works in themselves.

52 See Pepper Stetler’s, Stop Reading! Look! Modern Vision and the Weimar Photographic Book (2015) and Daniel Magliow’s, The Photography of Crisis: The Photo Essays of Weimar Germany (2012). 53 Moholy-Nagy cited in Stetler, “How to Read a Photographic Book” in Stop Reading! Look! Modern Vision and the Weimar Photographic Book, (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2015), 1. 54 Benjamin expresses his anxiety specifically with Moholy-Nagy’s essay in the concluding paragraph of “Little History,” wherein he cites him only as “somebody.” 294-295.

Krauss’s use of the Derridian concept of spacing can be extended to the format of

the book. In Die Welt ist schön, photographs are quite literally presented across a verso

page of blank space. That blank space—intentionally retained in this paper’s

reproductions of the book—offers a stable support that, when compiled into a single,

bounded folio, enables photographs to become serialized. “…Spacing destroys

simultaneous presence,” Krauss writes, “for it shows things sequentially, either one after

another or external to one another—occupying separate cells.”55 If, through framing, the

photographic image is analogous to the sign, the book format then supplied the syntax

with which these photographic signs could be joined. Moreover, when related to

Derrida’s concept of iterability as an additional requisite of language, the mass-

reproducibility of the photographic book further cemented its likeness to written

language.56

If the book format, in its very design, implies narrative and meaning, what story

does Die Welt ist schön impart? For those who have examined the book for its narrative

content, the answer varies. For Benjamin, the book reduced objects to things of aesthetic

enjoyment, divorced from the labor under which they were produced. Jennings cites

Renger-Patzsch as a moderate, that his romanticizing of nature offers a conservative bent

to the timely nature versus culture divide, but that, ultimately, the book offers a lesson in

55 Krauss, “The Photographic Conditions of Surrealism,” 23. 56 See Jacques Derrida, “Signature Event Context” in Limited Inc. (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1977), 1-21.

25 photography’s expansion and limitation of the field of vision.57 Stetler, who argues for the value of reading the book against a Marxist interpretation, relates Die Welt ist schön to the problem of photo-inflation; Die Welt ist schön’s strict organization of photographic records of the world, she writes, attempted to reign in the disorderly ubiquity of printed media.58

The book’s ability to elicit a broad range of convincing interpretations speaks to its persistent ambiguity. Perhaps the narrative ultimately rests in the hands of the reader.

While Die Welt ist schön is presented in a linear format, beginning with earth-bound topics like “Plants” and ending with conceptual ones like “Symbol,” the reader is not required to read the book in a linear fashion, from beginning to end. A linear reading of the book is further disrupted by the necessity to either rotate the book or one’s own body ninety-degrees to view the horizontally oriented images, negating any passivity in the viewer by literally requiring physical motion. In fact, the formal similarities drawn between all pictures—no matter how unlike—encourages the reader to make connections between images at will. The matrix of meaning afforded by the spacing of the book format in Die Welt ist schön is, at once, both non-linear and variable.

For readers like Heise, Moholy-Nagy, and others, Renger-Patzsch’s collection of photographs evinced the uniqueness of the medium in contrast to traditional pictorial vision. More critical readings of the book—often interpreted through the lens of New

Objectivity’s claim to truth and reportage—took issue with the book’s indexical claim to present to world as it was. While the book’s champions recognized the camera’s overt

57 See Jennings, “Agriculture, Industry, and the Birth of the Photo-Essay in the Late Weimar Republic.” 58 See Stetler, “The Value of Photography.”

ability to transform, its critics regarded this transformation as covert, that it disguised

aesthetic form as truth. I would argue that, as presented, Die Welt ist schön is stringently

dedicated to investigating photographic vision—an aim recognized by both Heise and

Kurt Wolff (evidenced by the book’s marketing and introduction) and by the broader

photographic avant-garde. Yet, photography’s ineluctable status as an index—which

prompted the book’s principal negative reception—prohibits the book from ever

exclusively presenting form. Photography’s unmasking of the special effects of printing

in pursuit of abstraction strengthened, ironically, its indexical relation. The book’s critical

reception thus highlights the oxymoronic problem of photographic abstraction—that

symbolic photographic form can never be fully severed from its real-world corollary. 59

This conundrum allows Die Welt ist schön to stand today not as a presentation of the

world, nor as an example of an emerging photographic style, but rather as a self-reflexive

study of photographic production, a process revealed precisely through its puzzling

contradictions.60

In a letter to Renger-Patzsch in 1956, many years after Die Welt ist schön’s

publication, photography critic Helmut Gernsheim described the book as a “turning

point” in the history of the medium.61 While often overlooked, Die Welt ist schön was at the center of a particularly fraught moment in photography. The concentration scholars have placed on art historical classification has resulted in a myopic view that has misidentified Renger-Patzsch’s artistic aims. Rather than antipodes, Renger-Patzsch and

59 This irony is strongest with the photogram, whose appearance is the most abstract and yet retains a 1:1 relation from object to the image. 60 These same issues of authorship and artistic production—that is, specifically, production achieved via the reconfiguration of pre-existing things—can be extended to discussions of the readymade. 61 Gernsheim additionally aligns Die Welt ist schön with Làszló Moholy-Nagy’s “pioneering work” at the Bauhaus, referencing Painting, Photography, Film. Cited in Kuspit, 7.

Moholy-Nagy were leaders at the fore of a significant shift in photographic production in which the artistic integrity of photography was established through technical mastery, instead of the manual effects of printing. Die Welt ist schön’s contradictory reception— which secured the book’s scholarly obscurity—exposes the consequences of such a shift in which the ambiguous relationship between photographic representation and abstraction prompted both praise and anxiety. While Benjamin fails to recognize the photographer as a producer, his essay implicitly declares Renger-Patzsch an author. A rigorous reconsideration of the classifications of Weimar photography might only then prompt a redetermination of Weimar’s contribution to the broader history of photography— one that considers the medium’s newfound relationship to writing, and the photographer’s emerging role as an author.

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APPENDIX 1

FIGURES

Fig.1 Die Welt ist schön (The World is Beautiful), 100 photographic records by Albert Renger-Patzsch, edited and introduced by Carl Georg Heise, published by Kurt Wolff Verlag, 1928

Fig. 2 Plate 10, Tropische Orchid, in Die Welt ist schön, 1928

Fig. 3 Plate 36, Weinbergweg. Ellerer Kapley, in Die Welt ist schön, 1928

Fig. 4 Plate 93, Bügeleisern für Schuhfabrikation. Fagus-Werk Benscheidt in Alfed, in Die Welt ist schön, 1928

Fig. 5 Plate 56, Kaffee Hag. Plakatentwurf, in Die Welt ist schön, 1928

Fig. 6 Plate 27, Natterkopf, in Die Welt ist schön, 1928

Fig. 7 Plate 60, Blick in den Chor des Lübecker Doms, in Die Welt ist schön, 1928

Fig.8 Karl Blossfeldt, Adiantum Pedatum, ca. 1898-1926

Fig. 9 August Sander, Bricklayer’s Mate, 1928, Gelatin silver print.

Fig. 10 László Moholy-Nagy, Berlin Radio Tower, 1928. Gelatin silver print.

Fig. 11 Moholy-Nagy, From the Radio Tower, Berlin, 1928. Gelatin silver print.

Fig. 12 Moholy-Nagy, Fotogramm, 1926. Gelatin silver print.

Fig. 13 Left: Plate 38, Baumstumpf auf Höhe am Waldschlag. Harz, in Die Welt ist schön, 1928. Right: Plate 50, Musterzimmer im Fagus-Werk Benscheidt in Alfeld. Shuhleisten und Stanzmesser-Fabrik, in Die Welt ist schön, 1928

Fig. 14. Left: Plate 4, Weintraube, in Die Welt ist schön, 1928 Right: Plate 69, Dampfabstellrad einer 1000 P.S. Dampfmaschine. Hannover, Continental-Werke., in Die Welt ist schön, 1928

Fig. 15 Top: Plate 5, Sempervivum percarneum, in Die Welt ist schön, 1928 Bottom: Plate 6, Sempervivum tabulaeforme, in Die Welt ist schön, 1928

Fig. 16 Cover of Die Welt ist schön, design credited to Vordemberge-Gildewart, 1928

Fig. 17 Cover of Die Welt ist schön with promotional sash.

Fig. 18 Installation view of Room 1 of the Film und Foto exhibition in Stuttgart, designed by Moholy-Nagy, 1929.

Fig. 19 Plate 52, Buchenscheite, in Die Welt ist schön, 1928

Fig. 20 Plate 30, Schafherde, in Die Welt ist schön, 1928

Fig. 21 Plate 51, Dachpfannenlager, in Die Welt ist schön, 1928

Fig. 22 Plates 5 & 6 as compared to the full negative image.

Fig. 23 Left to Right, Clockwise: Plate 8, Euphorbia grandicornis, in Die Welt ist schön, 1928; Plate 67, Vorstadthäuser, in Die Welt ist schön, 1928; Plate 68, Schilf, in Die Welt ist schön, 1928

Fig. 24 Left: Contact print of Kaimauer, full negative Right: Plate 49, Kaimauer, in Die Welt ist schön, 1928

Fig. 25 Pages 58-59 in Moholy-Nagy’s Painting Photography Film, 1967 edition

Fig. 26 Pages 56-57 and 88-89 in Moholy-Nagy’s Painting Photography Film, 1967 edition

Fig. 27 Pages 130-131 in Moholy-Nagy’s Painting Photography Film

Fig. 28, Moholy-Nagy, Untitled Photogram, 1925