Albert Renger-Patzsch - Die Welt ist schön (ORIGINAL DJ+SLIPCASE) - 1928

SUPER SCARCE OPPORTUNITY -
to purchase ONE OF THE MOST INFLUENTIAL GERMAN PHOTOBOOKS EVER PUBLISHED.

With the ORIGINAL DUSTJACKET and with the ORIGINAL SLIPCASE -
COLLECTOR'S COPY.

TRUE FIRST PRINTING in original blue linen (there was also a later edition published in red cloth in 1930).

Albert Renger-Patzsch stands for the 'New Objectivity' of the 1920s and 1930s like no other photographer.

The title is mentioned in all important books about photobooks:
- Martin Parr, The Photobook , vol 1, page 97
- Andrew Roth, Book of 101 Books, page 50
- 802 photo books from the M. + M. Auer collection, page 134
- Hasselblad Center, The Open Book, page 68/69

Welcome to the LAST PHOTOBOOK AUCTION by 5Uhr30.com starting this year -
with more than 100 great lots from my personal collection and from recent acquisitions.
Like always we guarantee detailed and accurate descriptions, 100% transport protection, 100% transport insurance and of course combined shipping - worldwide.

Kurt Wolff Verlag, Munich, 1928. First edition, first printing

Original hardback in original blue linen with original dustjacket in original slipcase (with photographer's name and title printed). 223 x 290 mm. 226 pages. Photos: Albert Renger-Patzsch. Text in German.

Condition:
Original book inside and outside new, mint, unread. Dustjacket excellent, very fresh with only light trace of use (see pictures); spine a bit sunned. Slipcase very fresh, complete with no tears and with no missing parts; spine sunned. Overall very fine condition.

One of the classics, one of the masterpieces in the history of photobook and the most
important book by the famous German photographer Albert Renger-Patzsch -
here with ORIGINAL DUSTJACKET and WITH ORIGINAL SLIPCASE = SUPER SCARCE OPPORTUNITY.

WE THANK YOU SO MUCH to make our single-seller photobook auctions on Catawiki so successful.
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"Albert Renger-Patzsch (1897-1966) was a German photographer associated with the New Objectivity.
Renger-Patzsch was born in Würzburg and began making photographs by age twelve. After military service in the First World War he studied chemistry at the Königlich-Sächsisches Polytechnikum in Dresden. In the early 1920s he worked as a press photographer for the Chicago Tribune before becoming a freelancer and, in 1925, publishing a book, Das Chorgestühl von Kappenberg (The Choir Stalls of Cappenberg). He had his first museum exhibition in Lübeck in 1927.
A second book followed in 1928, Die Welt ist schön (The World is Beautiful). This, his best-known book, is a collection of one hundred of his photographs in which natural forms, industrial subjects and mass-produced objects are presented with the clarity of scientific illustrations. The book's title was chosen by his publisher; Renger-Patzsch's preferred title for the collection was Die Dinge ("The Things").
In its sharply focused and matter-of-fact style, his work exemplifies the esthetic of the New Objectivity that flourished in the arts in Germany during the Weimar Republic. Like Edward Weston and Berenice Abbott in the United States, Renger-Patzsch believed that the value of photography was in its ability to reproduce the texture of reality, and to represent the essence of an object. He wrote: "The secret of a good photograph—which, like a work of art, can have esthetic qualities—is its realism ... Let us therefore leave art to artists and endeavor to create, with the means peculiar to photography and without borrowing from art, photographs which will last because of their photographic qualities.
Among his works of the 1920s are Echeoeria (1922) and Viper's Head (ca. 1925). During the 1930s Renger-Patzsch made photographs for industry and advertising. His archives were destroyed during the Second World War. In 1944 he moved to Wamel, Möhnesee, where he lived the rest of his life."
(Wikipedia)