Exceptionally original, Albert Renger-Patzsch is notable for his sobriety and rigorous approach on a technical and formal level by which the camera is used to intensify our awareness and perception of things.

The photographer manages to combine the descriptive and objective qualities of photography through his aesthetic skills, and his work achieves a genuine break with previous photographic practices. For this artist, it was the only way for photography to establish its own identity, clearly differentiated from the pictorialist legacy and the hybrid experimentalism of the early 20th century avant-gardes. His work is a true reflection of his words: >“modern life is no longer thinkable without photography”.

The catalog covers his career from the 1920s up to the 1960s, exploring the wide range of genres that marked it throughout three key phases: his early years, with images of plants for the publisher Folkwang/Auriga and the profusion of themes contained is his book Die Welt ist Schön (The World is Beautiful, 1928); the period that began with his move to the Ruhr area, characterized by a prolific production associated with its architecture and industrial features; and finally the post-World War II years, when he returned to nature.