Founded in 1907, the German Werkbund promoted a cultural reform movement that set the terms for what modern architecture and design would look like. The organization sponsored lectures, organized exhibitions, founded a museum of applied arts, and published numerous journals. Photography contributed to each one of these pursuits, yet its role in the Werkbund is rarely addressed. This essay examines a photography collection donated to Berlin’s Kunstbibliothek by Hermann Reckendorf, who published most Werkbund books, journals, and catalogs between 1920 and 1932. These photographs infuse mass-produced commodities – light bulbs, tea kettles, chairs – with an auratic sense of cultural importance. More than documents, these photographs provided their own way of seeing that emphasized Werkbund principles of standardization, reproduction, and industrial form.