More Information
Author Albert Renger-Patzsch / Ernst von Laer
Pages 140
Signed No
Publisher C.G. Roder
Publishing date 1937
Publishing place Leipzig
Language German
Edition First edition
Binding Hardcover without dustjacket (as issued)
Book condition Collectible; Very Good
Condition description Nice clean copy
Dimensions (cm hxb) 24 x 31
“This company photobook, made for the 400th anniversary of the sheet copperworking firm F.A. Lange in 1937, contains some of Albert Renger-Patzsch's finest work. The photographs in ‘Kupferhammer Grünthal' are perhaps not as innovative as the images in ’Die Welt ist schön' (1928)...or his urban landscapes from Essen in the early 1930s, but they are sharply observed, technically impressive, and well-reproduced. The beginning of Ernst von Laer's text sets the book's theme--'Land, Men, Work'....Thus Renger-Patzsch begins with the land and a series of calm, meditative landscapes, many of them shot under a blanket of snow. The next section, containing the most interesting pictures, focuses on the workers, with a number of fine close-up portrait heads in the August Sander vein. Finally, we are taken into the workplace itself, for conventional but satisfying and impeccably crafted interiors. ‘Kupferhammer Grünthal' is a sumptuously produced book, demonstrating the full range of Renger-Patzsch's talents, and revealing an eye that was none too adventurous but always interesting. The book is as much a documentary study of the community that provides the company with its workers, and in its particular combination of landscapes, portraits and interiors, is almost a forerunner of the studies Paul Strand made of various European communities in the 1950s and 1960s”Martin Parr and Gerry Badger "The Photobook, A History", Volume II - page 186

The Photobook: A History (Parr & Badger)

Kupferhammer Grünthal Vierhundert Jahre deutscher Architektur, 1537-1937

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1st and only edition. Original tan cloth as issued. Embossed with Gründthal copperwoks arms on the front cover. Introduction by Ernst von Laer. 50 b&w plates by Renger-Patzsch.
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