Albert Renger-Paltzsch: Joy Before the Object

In Germany between the two World Wars, a vibrant aesthetic burst forth in the field of design that took the term “modern” to previously unimagined heights. This vision celebrated the forms of technology, from the glass and steel of the Bauhaus to the sleek lines and innovative typography of the new graphic design. In a reaction to the then-fashionable Pictorialist tradition, which sought to render the world in painterly terms using photographic methods, the Neue Sachlichkeit, or New Objectivity, emerged, and chief among its practitioners was Albert Renger-Patzsch.