Getty Museum

[Factory Smokestack]

Creator

German Photographer · 1897–1966

Artist

In 1924 Albert Renger-Patzsch got his start as a professional photographer by making the images for the first two books in a series titled *Die Welt der Pflanze* (The World of Plants). His work went uncredited, but two years later his name appeared on another book, *Das Chorgestühl von Kappenberg* (The Choir Stalls of Cappenberg). He soon became an independent photographer and exhibited his photog

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Date: about 1925
Medium: Gelatin silver print
Culture: German
Department: Photographs
Institution: Getty Museum

This photograph encompasses both the grand scale of the smokestack and the intimate detail of the brick and mortar that went into its construction. Photographed from almost directly below looking straight up, the smokestack stands as a dizzying monument to industrial progress, dominating the sky like an ancient pyramid built in homage to the gods. The tower's placement just left of center, the meandering crack rising in the brick at the structure's center, and the spindly rail attached like a long-legged caterpillar to the smokestack at the right, however, serve to humanize the image by revealing subtle deviations from the industrial era's ideal of perfect regularity.

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