Albert Renger-Patzsch as Educator: ‘Learn to see the world’

Abstract

Renger-Patzsch is one of a number of photographers whose work during the 1920s was seen as typical in its attempt to propagate new models of photographic vision. While he may not be remembered foremost as one of the proponents of ‘new vision’ photography within an educational setting, such as his contemporaries László Moholy-Nagy, Walter Peterhans, Hans Finsler and Max Burchartz at their respective institutions of the Bauhaus, Burg Giebichenstein and the Folkwang School, his impact in this area cannot be disregarded. He received several offers to teach in the late 1920s and early 1930s, specifically from the National Building Academy in Weimar, the Karl Ernst Osthaus Association in Hagen, the Reimann School in Berlin, the Secondary Professional School of Graphics of the City of Berlin, 1 Documentation in the form of correspondence for all of these offers can be found in the Albert Renger-Patzsch Papers, Acc.-No. 861187, located in Resource Collections at the Getty Research Institute for the History of Art and the Humanities, Los Angeles, CA (hereafter GRIHAH). and finally the Folkwang Sch?ol in Essen. During these years, he formulated distinct ideas about photographic education and became increasingly interested in possibilities for their implementation. Although he actually taught in an official capacity for only one semester during the 45 years of his professional involvement with the medium, it is clear that his notions with regard to photographic education and his theoretical approach toward the medium influenced one another significandy. This essay will consider the various teaching offers Renger-Patzsch received, as well as the circumstances which brought him to Essen, a city with which his name is strongly connected, for it is here that he lived from 1929 until 1944, that he was provided with a studio and darkroom at the Folkwang Museum, and that he taught a course on artistic photography at the Folkwang School in Winter 1933–34.

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