New Objectivity photography

• Daylight studio: a skylight, a glasshouse or a courtyard, with a backdrop behind the sitter.
• Open shadows: bright surroundings (walls, ground, sky) fill them; no reflector needed.

Shadow edges

Shadows that fade gradually from light to dark, cast by a large or diffused light: a window, a softbox, a cloudy sky.

Shadow depth

Shadows kept light and full of detail by a reflector, a fill light, bounce or bright surroundings (a low lighting ratio, up to about 3:1: the shadow side at most a stop and a half darker).

Shape & form

Light turning gradually into shade across faces and objects, so their volume shows.

This plan is worked out from the style’s choices, so it is drawn as a schematic. The set-up at the top of the page is the one we rendered, to scale. One way to get the light, not a record of how any photograph was lit.

Then

40–100 mm · f/16–f/36 · 0.5 s–12 min on 13 × 18 cm, inferred from the gear and the look. 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.

Focal length

Very close focus: small things at life size or larger. Roughly the eye’s own perspective; no visible distortion.

Focus

Everything sharp from the nearest stone to the horizon.

Angle

The camera at the height of a standing person or of the subject.

Distance

Within arm’s reach: faces, hands and details fill the frame.

Balance

The subject faces the lens; planes run parallel to the picture. The subject in the middle, the frame balanced around it.

Crop & fill

Detail runs to every edge with no single centre.

Duration

An unmoving scene, exposed slowly and carefully.

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.

Body position

Upright, weight on both feet, shoulders level: the plain, even stance of a formal sitting or a line-up.

Turn to the camera

Shoulders and hips face the lens straight on: direct, symmetrical, sometimes confrontational.

Head & gaze

Looking straight into the camera, so the subject meets the viewer’s eye.

Arms & hands

Hands busy with a prop or a tool: flowers, a phone, a cup, a cigarette, an instrument, one’s own work.

Expression

Unsmiling, composed and blank: the face gives nothing away.

Without a pose

No people at all, or people so small or far off that their pose does not read (hands alone are Hands alone).

With the sitter

Neutral, unemotional and distant. The sitter arranged and still, facing the camera.

The set-up

The same kind of subject, photographed the same way, many times.

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.

Clothes

The clothes of a trade, a rank, a team or an institution.

Set & props

A painted, cloth, paper or seamless backdrop behind the subject.

Look of the styling

Few, simple elements on clean surfaces, with space around them.

Monochrome

Rich blacks, clean whites and every grey between.

Film

A view camera on a tripod: great detail, slow and deliberate.

Texture

Every surface resolved, more than the eye would see.

Post-production

Nothing changed beyond exposure and development.

Shown as

Pictures made and shown as a set.

Shown in

The book as the main form of the work.

Stay away from soft focus & diffusion, gum & pigment processes, painted, scratched or drawn on, composite & montage, multiple exposure, tilted angle, lyrical & poetic, theatrical & acted, laughing, black shadows and patterned & dappled light.