gelatin silver print

titled (pencil) and stamped on verso

"Let's leave art to the artists and try to create photographs with the means of photography that can stand their ground through their photographic qualities," wrote Albert Renger-Patzsch in the book Lob des Rheingaus (In Praise of the Rheingau) in 1953. The family company C.H. Boehringer & Sohn commissioned Renger-Patzsch, who was already a well-known photographer at the time, to produce initially one illustrated book about the Rheingau. In the entire four volumes, Renger-Patzsch pays tribute to the beauty and cultural aspects of the Rheingau region in Germany. The Rheingau is a wine region located along the Rhine River and known for its wine production and picturesque landscapes.
C.H. Boehringer & Sohn (now Boehringer Ingelheim) is a pharmaceutical company founded in 1885 by Albert Boehringer in Ingelheim am Rhein. It is the largest research-based pharmaceutical company in Germany. Boehringer Ingelheim's core business is the research, development, manufacture and sale of pharmaceuticals for humans and animals. Today, more than 8,000 people are employed at the Inglheim site alone. A few years after the illustrated books in 1959, the entrepreneur Ernst Boehringer initiated the "International Days", a series of events to promote appreciation and understanding of different cultures. With a variety of events and an art exhibition, the "International Days" have been an annual highlight of the Ingelheim calendar of events ever since. Each year, the "International Days" are dedicated to a special theme, including countries, regions or even artists such as Paul Klee, Andy Warhol, Pablo Picasso, Marc Chagall and Käthe Kollwitz.
(Christoph Fuchs)

Albert Renger-Patzsch essentially creates the image by cropping and leaving a found configuration of objects, just as Edward Weston does, for example, in the work Cypress, Point Lobos (S-134).
(Fritz Simak)