The Sapling

Albert Renger-Patzsch

1929 · Gelatin silver print · Photographs

Between the world wars, Renger-Patzsch was a major champion of straight photography in Germany and an advocate for a modern aesthetic style known as Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity). Known for his tightly cropped, sharply focused images of plants, animals, landscapes, and industrial subjects, he believed that photography’s chief value lay in its ability to render with absolute precision the texture and detail of physical objects. Critics praised the “absolute realism” of his photography, particularly its capacity to reveal “nature more intensely than nature reveals herself.” This quiet study of a sapling outlined against a landscape with melting snow is one of Renger-Patzsch’s most celebrated images—a harbinger of regeneration and a stunning example of photography’s crystalline power of description.

Artist

Albert Renger-Patzsch

Date

1929

Medium

Gelatin silver print

Department

Photographs

Credit line

Twentieth-Century Photography Fund, 2013