Sale 2489 - Artists & Amateurs: Photographs & Photobooks, October 18, 2018

359 c   (INDUSTRIAL—GERMANY) Presentation album entitled Schwelwerk Offleben, with 35 photographs of a steam power plant. Includes 29 stunning, mostly exterior industrial studies and 6 smaller work portraits. Ferrotyped silver prints, the images measuring 4x3 1 / 2 to 7x6 1 / 2 inches (10.2x8.9 to 17.8x16.5 cm.), the sheets slightly larger, mounted recto only, with corners. Oblong 4o, gilt-lettered red leatherette; with the glassine interleafing tissue. 1952 [2,500/3,500] The accomplished photographs in this album, which recall the work of Charles Sheeler and Albert Renger-Patzsch, post-date the distinctive German artistic movement known as the Neue Sachlichkeit [the New Objectivity]. This cool, objective approach to rendering architectural and functional forms also inf luenced later artists like Bernd and Hilla Becher and Thomas Ruff. It is unclear if the pictures are by one or many photographers but the consistency throughout— sharply focused compositions, elegant use of lighting, and superb printing technique—result in an exceptional suite of industrial photographs.