“A MASTER OF THE DYNAMIC CLOSE-UP”

RENGER-PATZSCH, Albert. Eisen und Stahl [Iron and Steel]. Berlin: Hermann Reckendorf, 1931. Tall octavo, original half blue cloth, original silver paper-covered boards. $1350.

First edition of Renger-Patzsch’s influential masterpiece, with 97 black-and-white photogravures that helped ignite “one of Germany’s most pervasive modernist movements” (Roth).

In Eisen und Stahl, Albert Renger-Patzsch’s monumental photobook on German industry, he “shows himself a master of the dynamic close-up… at a time when the modernist approach was at its height, and the German economy and industry were in a desperate situation” (Parr & Badger I:125). In this volume’s pristine 97 photogravure plates of massive furnaces, glistening machines and immense welded archways that span factory landscapes largely absent workers, Eisen und Stahl epitomizes “the New Objectivity (Neue Sachlichkeit) style Renger-Patzsch sparked… one of Germany’s most pervasive modernist movements” (Roth, 50). Text in German by Dr. Albert Vögler. Without scarce dust jacket, rarely found. Open Book, 102.

Images fresh and bright, lightest edge-wear to fragile original boards. A key 20th-century photobook in near-fine condition.