What is new objectivity?
The New Objectivity emerged as a style in Germany in the 1920s as a challenge to Expressionism. This refers to art in which the image of reality is distorted in order to make it expressive of the artist’s inner feelings or ideas.
As its name suggests, it offered a return to unsentimental reality and a focus on the objective world, as opposed to the more abstract, romantic, or idealistic tendencies of expressionism.
Albert Renger-Patzsch
Renger-Patzsch was born in Würzburg, Germany, and began making photographs by age twelve. In the early 1920s he worked as a press photographer for the Chicago Tribune before becoming a freelancer and, in 1925, publishing a book called Das Chorgestühl von Kappenberg (The Choir Stalls of Cappenberg). He had his first museum exhibition in Lübeck in 1927.
A second book followed in 1928 called Die Welt ist schön (The World is Beautiful). This was his best-known book, and is made up of a collection of one hundred of his photographs.
In its sharply focused and matter-of-fact style, his work exemplifies the aesthetic of the New Objectivity. Renger-Patzsch believed that the value of photography was in its ability to reproduce the texture of reality, and to represent the essence of an object.
Some examples of his work
Karl Blossfeldt
Karl Blossfeldt was a German photographer and sculptor. He is best known for his close-up photographs of plants and living things. He was inspired, by nature and the ways in which plants grow. He believed that “the plant must be valued as a totally artistic and architectural structure.”
Among his contacts at the Berlin Arts and Crafts School was Heinz Warneke. From 1923, he was professor at the Vereinigte Staatsschulen für Freie und Angewandte Kunst (United State Schools for Fine and Applied Art) in Berlin, Germany. He died aged 67.
Some examples of his work
