Albert Renger-Patzsch - WAZ (FACTORY PHOTOBOOK, SUPER RARE) - 1955

SUPER SCARCE OPPORTUNITY to purchase ONE OF THE MOST RARE FACTORY BOOKS with photos by legendary German photographer Albert Renger-Patzsch ("Die Welt ist schön").

Showing the "WAZ" ("Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung"), "A printing and publishing house in the Ruhr region", built between 1952 and 1954 (Architect: P. F. Schneider, Essen–Cologne).

This SUPER BEAUTIFUL FACTORY PHOTOBOOK (published shortly after the completion of the publishing house in the mid fifties) is WIDELY UNKNOWN AND HIGHLY UNDERRATED.

TRUE FIRST AND ONLY PRINTING.
FRESH CONDITION.

THIS IS THE LAST EXCLUSIVE PHOTOBOOK AUCTION by 5Uhr30.com in 2025 -
with more than 100 great lots from my personal collection and from recent acquisitions.

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

Like always 5Uhr30.com guarantees detailed and accurate descriptions, 100% transport protection, 100% transport insurance, and of course, combined shipping - worldwide.

Albert Renger's title "Die Welt ist schön" 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

5Uhr30.com says MANY THANKS FOR YOUR SUPPORT THIS YEAR -
making our single-seller photobook auctions on Catawiki so successful.
Ecki Heuser & team are wishing ALL THE BEST TO YOU AND YOURS for 2026.

WAZ, Essen (self-published). 1955. First edition, first printing

Original hardback in original grey linen. 248 x 298 mm. 100 pages (14 pages with text, 86 pages with black and white photos). Photos: Albert Renger-Patzsch. Text in German.

Condition:
Inside excellent, very fresh and flawless; clean with no marks and with no foxing. Outside quite fresh with sharp corners; little trace of use, some red stains. Overall fine condition.

One of the rarest Albert Renger-Patzsch titles - in fresh condition.

"Albert Renger-Patzsch was a photographer of the so-called New Objectivity movement.
His father Robert Renger-Patzsch (1868-1920), himself interested in photography, awakened his interest. By the age of 14, he had already mastered the entire spectrum of photographic techniques and development. Albert initially studied chemistry in Dresden, but soon broke off his studies and took over the management of the picture archive of the Folkwang publishing house in Hagen in 1922. In 1923 he joined a picture agency in Berlin. From 1925, he worked as a freelance photographer in Bad Harzburg. In 1929 Renger-Patzsch moved to Essen, where he was given studio space in the Folkwang Museum. During this time, he focussed on industrial photography. He cancelled a teaching assignment for photography at the Folkwang School in 1933. After a large part of his archive was destroyed by bombing in 1944, he retired to Wamel on Lake Möhne at the end of the war and devoted himself to nature photography. He published his work in the cultural magazine Westfalenspiegel, for example.
As an opponent of art photography, he developed a direct, objective style of photography in the 1920s. He formulated his idea of modern photography in his 1928 book Die Welt ist schön (published by Carl Georg Heise). This book contains 100 photographs from various subject areas (plants, people, landscape, architecture, machines and industrial products). The individual subjects are mostly detached from their context and reproduced in brief excerpts. The viewer's gaze is thus drawn to the surface, structure and form of the object depicted. The images appear purist, simple and clear.
He has recorded his programmatic statements on photography in several essays, in which he speaks out against any interpretation of his pictures and denies any artistic intention. He wanted his photographs to be understood merely as documents that depict reality in a ruthless, unadorned and realistic way and opposed the construction, montage, experimentation and use of photographic effects as practised in Bauhaus, Pictorialist and Surrealist photography.
As photography increasingly displaced the graphic arts from the field of pictorial advertising in the 1920s, the advertising industry became a lucrative client for many photographers. Renger-Patzsch worked for Pelikan and Jenaer Glaswerke, among others. One of his most famous advertising shots shows a series of identical, upright irons, which in Renger-Patzsch's photography symbolise industrial mass production (see product photography).
In the decades that followed, many advertising photographers built on the idea that the beauty of sober, functional forms only unfolds in repetition.
Renger-Patzsch's architectural photographs show, among other things, industrial regions characterised by coal and steel, which were not yet considered worthy of being photographed at the time. Here he primarily used the verticals and horizontals of clearly and functionally orientated buildings. Extreme top and bottom views emphasise the architectural forms.
The photo-historical significance of the works can also be seen from the fact that the artist's own contemporary prints (vintage prints) now fetch prices of around 10,000 US dollars at auctions (for example in New York in May 2005) and exquisite top works have already achieved over 90,000 US dollars, while Renger-Patzsch's photo volumes (e.g. Im Wald) (in the lower price segment) are now highly priced at auctions."
(Wikipedia)