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BABOON

measurements note
9 by 6 3/4 in. (22.9 x 17.2 cm.)

the photographer's 'Renger-Patzsch D.W.B. Fotografie Bad Harzburg' studio and reproduction rights stamps and with numerical notations in unidentified hands in pencil on the reverse, matted, circa 1928

PROVENANCE

Mark Kelman, New York

Acquired by the Gilman Paper Company from the above, 1978

LITERATURE

Other prints of this image:

Maria Morris Hambourg and Christopher Phillips, The New Vision: Photography Between the World Wars, Ford Motor Company Collection at The Metropolitan Museum of Art (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1989, in conjunction with the exhibition), pl. 75

Manfred Heiting, At the Still Point: Photographs from the Manfred Heiting Collection (Los Angeles, 2000), vol. II, pl. 303

NOTE

This photograph likely was taken as part of a series from which Renger-Patzsch chose images for his important book, Die Welt ist Schön (The World is Beautiful). Published in 1928, the volume was one of the main catalysts for Renger-Patzsch's success as a photographer, as well as for the proliferation of the German anti-pictorialist movement Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity). Between the years of 1926 and 1932 Renger-Patzsch photographed a number of animals, including goats, snakes, horses, ostriches, and baboons. At that time, working mainly out of Bad Harzburg, Germany, he would have had fairly local access to a great variety of wild animals, as there were impressive zoos in both Hamburg and Cologne, each of which had been established near the turn of the twentieth century. Both zoos utilized a new theory of design, implemented first at the Hamburg zoo by Carl Hagenbeck, which allowed for baboons and other wildlife to be displayed in more natural, open-air environments. A variant image, presumably of the same grey baboon that is shown here, is reproduced as plate 21 in Die Welt ist Schön. It is likely that these two baboon images were shot by Renger-Patzsch during the same sitting. A print of the image offered here is in the Ford Motor Company Collection at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Another print is in the Manfred Heiting Collection at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.