Nach Der Natur is without doubt the most elaborate and beautiful publication which has yet appeared in photographic literature. The text, which serves as an introduction to the pictures, is an essay, which tries to prove that pictorial photography may be an art. Even if all the pictures selected may not prove the case, most of them are perfect gems. The photogravures, as such, are beautiful specimens of the most perfect of all photographic reproduction processes." [1]

This work emerged from the international pictorial photography movement, the American counterpart of which was led by Stieglitz who is represented here by one subject. The photographs were selected from those in the 1896 Berlin Internationale Ausstellung fur Amateur-Photographie. Among members of the Stieglitz circle included were Rene Le Begue (Paris) and Hugo Henneberg (Austria). The only other American exhibited was Emma J. Farnsworth who joined internationally prominent pictorial photographers: de Clercq (Belgium), Gustav Trinks (Hamburg), Maurice Bucquet (Paris), Alexandre (Brussels), Otto Rau (Berlin), Leonard Missone (Belgium), Alexis Mazurin (Moscow), and Ludwig David (Vienna). The photogravures are printed with great care.

The elegant Nach der Natur was published at the request of the German and Silesian Society of the Friends of Photography by the Berlin Photographic Company. Nach der Natur contained thirty-two photogravures (including Stieglitz’s Scurrying Home).