Die Welt ist schön (The World is Beautiful) is a 1928 book of photography by German photographer Albert Renger-Patzsch. A popular work at the time, Die Welt ist schön is generally considered one of the most important books of photography published in the Weimar Republic, and as an iconic example of the photography of New Objectivity.[1] Renger-Patzsch's book provoked emphatic reactions upon release: while contemporaries such as Ernst Toller and Thomas Mann praised Die Welt ist schön. It was sharply criticized by figures like Walter Benjamin, and Bertolt Brecht, who felt that Renger-Patzsch's work was too beholden to a naive idea of photographic realism and ended up aestheticizing everything, thus obscuring social realities.[2]
^Stiegler 2010, p. 312; Rüter, Ulrich. "The Reception of Albert Renger-Patzsch's Die Welt ist schön". History of Photography 21.3, Autumn 1997, p. 193; Jennings 2000, pp. 46–7; McBride 2012, pp. 174–5; Kreinik 2008, pp. 210–2
References
Gelderloos, Carl (2014). "Simply Reproducing Reality—Brecht, Benjamin, and Renger-Patzsch on Photography". German Studies Review. 37 (3): 549–573. doi:10.1353/gsr.2014.0103. S2CID144873721.
Jennings, Michael (2000). "Agriculture, Industry, and the Birth of the Photo-Essay in the Late Weimar Republic". October. 93: 23–56. doi:10.2307/779156. JSTOR779156.
Kreinik, Juliana (2008). The Canvas and the Camera in Weimar Germany: A New Objectivity in Painting and Photography of the 1920s (dissertation). New York University.
McBride, Patrizia (2012). "Narrative Resemblance:The Production of Truth in the Modernist Photobook of Weimar Germany". New German Critique. 39 (1): 1–26. doi:10.1215/0094033X-1434542.
Stiegler, Bernd (2010). "Editorial afterword". Die Freude am Gegenstand (in German). Munich: Fink Verlag.
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