Göhnender Pavian

Albert Renger-Patzsch

ca. 1928 · Gelatin silver print · Photographs

"Here the movement of 1/100th of a second is frozen with a truthfulness to life which neither brush nor pencil could ever surpass," wrote Renger-Patzch of this image in New Camera Views. The next year (1928) he composed a picture book, The World is Beautiful, which treats man-made and natural objects as structural analogues of one another. This organizing principle rejected the visual delight of the atypical or anomalous, so vivid in this picture; consequently the book reproduced a static and conventional "portrait" of the baboon instead of this image.

Artist

Albert Renger-Patzsch

Date

ca. 1928

Medium

Gelatin silver print

Department

Photographs

Credit line

Ford Motor Company Collection, Gift of Ford Motor Company and John C. Waddell, 1987