# New Objectivity photography

> Sober, sharply focused photographs of single things, seen square-on and close: a plant bud magnified against a plain grey ground, rows of identical sweets, a blast-furnace wall, a painter standing in his street in coat and bowler hat. Light is even, nothing tilts, and every surface is resolved. Each subject is photographed the same way many times, and the pictures are gathered in books and series that compare plant forms, products, machines and social types without comment.

- Period: 1922–1933
- Where it began: Weimar Germany, under the name G
- Kind: Modernist
- Also called: Neue Sachlichkeit (photography), New Photography
- Page: https://lumogeny.com/styles/new-objectivity-photography/

## How the look is made

- Face the thing square-on and centre it; let no tilt, odd angle or dramatic light comment on it.
- Isolate one object against a plain ground or in even daylight, and come close enough that its structure fills the picture.
- Keep everything sharp and the print straight, so that form and texture can be read like a specimen.
- Repeat the method: photograph many plants, products or people in the same way and sequence them in a book for comparison.
- Let people stand still and face the camera in their own clothes and surroundings, and name them by what they do, not by how they look.

## How it is lit

- Even daylight, overcast or diffused, with no hard shadows.
- A plant or object lit softly against a plain grey or white card, so its outline and surface read clearly.
- Open daylight outdoors for full-length portraits in the sitter's own street, workplace or field.

### The rendered set-up

One object square-on and close against plain grey card, lit softly from above and in front so its outline and surface read clearly. Rendered in Blender Cycles on a synthetic clay figure or still life, with the lights exactly where the plan on the page puts them.

### A light plan from its choices (schematic)

- Key: the open sky, all around and above, soft.

## Camera settings

40–100 mm · f/16–f/36 · 0.5 s–12 min (on 13x18), inferred. Plate cameras on a tripod: Sander's 12 × 16.5 and 13 × 18 cm plates with Zeiss lenses, Blossfeldt's 50 cm Aplanat (about 100 mm equivalent) at f/36 for 8–12 minutes in soft daylight. Normal lenses of about 40–50 mm equivalent, and Sander's and Renger-Patzsch's stops and times, are inferred.

## Directing people

Stand or seat the sitter still, full length or to the knees, shoulders square to the camera and eyes into the lens, face composed and unsmiling; hands hang at the sides or hold a tool or attribute of the trade. Families and groups stand in a row, or sit in front with others standing behind. No directed mood or gesture.

## Styling

People wear their own working clothes, uniform or Sunday best, in their own street, workshop or field, with a tool of their trade; nothing is made up. Things are isolated: a plant against a plain grey or white card, products laid in even rows, machines and buildings as they stand.

## Before you shoot it

Sander's People of the 20th Century shows real people, including the persecuted and the poor, and the Nazi authorities seized Antlitz der Zeit in 1936 and destroyed its plates. When photographing people as types, ask them, credit them and classify by what they do, never by ethnicity, race or appearance, which turns the method into colonial or racial 'type' photography. Never present a generated portrait as a historical document of a real person.

## Photographs

- Karl Blossfeldt, Plantstudie, plate 22 of Urformen der Kunst, Ernst Wasmuth, Berlin, 1928. Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam (RP-F-2008-51-2170-22), public domain. Shown on the page: https://www.rijksmuseum.nl/en/collection/RP-F-2008-51-2170-22
- Karl Blossfeldt, Plantstudie, plate 84 of Urformen der Kunst, Ernst Wasmuth, Berlin, 1928. Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam (RP-F-2008-51-2170-84), public domain. Shown on the page: https://www.rijksmuseum.nl/en/collection/RP-F-2008-51-2170-84
- August Sander, Maler Anton Räderscheidt, 1926. Centre Pompidou, Paris, purchase 1979 (AM 1979-185). © Die Photographische Sammlung / SK Stiftung Kultur – August Sander Archiv, Köln / Adagp, Paris. In copyright, linked: https://www.centrepompidou.fr/fr/ressources/oeuvre/cEBkkG
- Albert Renger-Patzsch, Marzipanbrote, 1927. Centre Pompidou, Paris, purchase 1979 (AM 1978-859). © Albert Renger-Patzsch-Archiv / Ann & Jürgen Wilde / Adagp, Paris. In copyright, linked: https://www.centrepompidou.fr/fr/ressources/oeuvre/caz5LE7

## Sources

- Neue Sachlichkeit, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neue_Sachlichkeit (Renger-Patzsch and Sander as leading representatives of the 'New Photography'; sharply focused, documentary quality; Blossfeldt as a variation; movement dated 1920s to 1933)
- Neue Sachlichkeit (Fotografie), Wikipedia (de): https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neue_Sachlichkeit_(Fotografie) (term coined by G. F. Hartlaub in 1923; cool, objective realism; most precise rendering of form; documentation and inventory; set against pictorialism and experiment; Renger-Patzsch, Sander, Blossfeldt, Hans Finsler, Hein Gorny, Max Baur)
- Albert Renger-Patzsch, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Renger-Patzsch (1897–1966; Die Welt ist schön, 1928, 100 photographs of natural forms, industrial subjects and mass-produced objects; publisher's title, his preferred title Die Dinge; 'Let us therefore leave art to artists')
- Die Welt ist schön, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Die_Welt_ist_sch%C3%B6n (Kurt Wolff, 1928; criticised by Benjamin and Brecht for aestheticising everything)
- Karl Blossfeldt, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Blossfeldt (1865–1932; Urformen der Kunst 1928/29, Ernst Wasmuth, Berlin; Wundergarten der Natur 1932; self-built lenses magnifying about thirty times; plain grey or white backgrounds)
- August Sander, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/August_Sander (1876–1964; People of the 20th Century begun 1911 in seven sections; Face of Our Time 1929 with 60 portraits and Alfred Döblin's introduction; book confiscated 1936 and plates destroyed)
- Plantstudie, Urformen der Kunst plate 22, Rijksmuseum: https://www.rijksmuseum.nl/en/collection/RP-F-2008-51-2170-22 (Blossfeldt, Nierendorf and Ernst Wasmuth, Berlin, 1928; rotogravure; public domain)
- Maler Anton Räderscheidt, Centre Pompidou: https://www.centrepompidou.fr/fr/ressources/oeuvre/cEBkkG (August Sander, 1926, gelatin silver print printed 1969, AM 1979-185)
- Hanako Murata, 'Material Forms in Nature: The Photographs of Karl Blossfeldt', MoMA Object:Photo essay (PDF): https://artblart.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/murata.pdf (self-built camera with a bellows about one metre long; negatives made in soft daylight 'using an Aplanat 1:36, F=50-cm lens and an exposure time of eight to twelve minutes', from the technical entries for six plates in Das Deutsche Lichtbild 1930–1935; glass plates of 6 × 9, 9 × 12, 9 × 18 and 13 × 18 cm, the last three 96 per cent; Hauff 'Flavin' and Satrap plates)
- 'What camera and materials did August Sander use?', Unique Photo community Q&A: https://www.uniquephoto.com/community/qa/what-camera-and-materials-did-august-sander-use (quotes Sander's 1925 letter to Erich Stenger, Taschen, Sander, p. 108: 'I use Zeiss lenses, an orthochromatic plate with corresponding light filter'; 'I make my photos on 12x16 1/2 or 13x18 plates, enlarging them to 18x24')

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From Lumogeny (https://lumogeny.com/), a service of Van Riel Online Services. The shoot sheet for your own camera, lenses and lights is on the page: https://lumogeny.com/styles/new-objectivity-photography/#sheet