Photographs by Albert Renger-Patzsch
Preface by Weston Naef
Essay by Donald Kuspit
Albert Renger-Patzsch: Joy Before the Object is the first major publication in English on this influential German photographer, who is one of the founders of modern European photography. Amid the climate of intellectual, artistic, and political ferment in Germany between the wars, the idea of "beauty" was being redefined.
Renger-Patzsch spent a lifetime photographing 'things' and imbued them with a vibrating, sometimes disturbing, life."--"ARTnews"
"There is an urgent need to examine old opinions and look at things from a new viewpoint. There must be an increase in the joy one takes in an object, and the photographer should become fully conscious of the splendid fidelity of reproduction made possible by his technique. Nature, after all, is not so poor that she requires constant improvement." --Albert Renger-Patzsch, "Joy Before the Object, 1928"