“CASTLES AND MANSIONS CROWNING THE HEIGHTS AROUND”

RENGER-PATZSCH, Albert. Lob des Rheingaus (In Praise of the Rheingau). (München: Ingelheim am Rhein, 1953). Folio, original gilt-stamped rust cloth. $550.

First edition by pioneering Neue Sachlichkeit photographer Renger-Patzsch, with 103 finely screened photogravure plates (three double-page) of the Rhine valley.

In the rich pastoral landscapes and architectural views of ancient castles and monasteries seen here in Lob Des Rheingaus (In Praise of the Rheingau)—images absent any sustained human presence or sign of industrialization—Albert Renger-Patzsch continues the groundbreaking work he began in Die Welt ist Schön (The World is Beautiful, 1928) and sustained in "his urban landscapes from Essen in the early 1930s." Here, similarly, are pictures that are "are sharply observed, technically impressive and well-reproduced" (Parr & Badger II:186). The volume's large gravure plates of the Rhine valley are much "in keeping with Renger-Patzsch's idea of a strictly 'photographic photography': pictures that were above all straightforward, easily apprehended documents, free of the distracting artistic interventions of his avant-garde contemporaries… The New Objectivity (Neue Sachlichkeit) style he sparked was one of Germany's most pervasive modernist movements" (Roth, 50). Lob des Rheingaus also sets the foundation "for the studies Paul Strand made of various European communities in the 1950s and 1960s" (Parr & Badger II:186). Text in German, English, French and Spanish; Preface by Professor L. Curtius. As issued without dust jacket. See Parr & Badger I:97,125.

A fine copy.