His photography's central character is brought about by its interplay between machines and people, as well as the physical processes that the industrial workers carried out.
[5] Following the significant threat posed to the Reimann School following Hitler's rise to power in January 1933, Nurnberg was forced to move to England in 1933 or 1934,[5][3] taking his work from Farbe und Form with him.
He lodged in Finchley and became acquainted with the daughter of his hosts, Rita Kern, also a photographer working for Gee & Watson, a commercial studio based in Holborn and known as pioneers of process engraving.
[2] His experience in the Army brought him into contact with a wide variety of people, and he gained a respect for workers' craft and skill as well as their dignity and integrity through this.
[1] In 1946, he was commissioned by United Steel Companies which asked him to produce images for their technical catalogues not printed since the start of World War II, in which he focused on "the human element and craftsmanship".
[4] Walter and Rita self-published the limited edition book Men and Machines in 1954 to commemorate the end of their touring exhibitions; it includes a selection of 44 images taken between 1946 and 1953, and bookends the most prolific phase of their careers.
Walter and Rita's approach to photography would be perceived as increasingly unviable, with fellow photographer A. M. Devlin stating in response that he struggled to picture "a production line worker achieving dignity as he applied another nut to another bolt for the 5000th time.
[6] In 1983, he was the subject of a revival of interest in relation to industrial photography, and released a Kodak exhibition called The Enchantment of Architecture which toured Britain for three years.
For his more dynamic works, he made use of a handheld Rolleiflex twin-lens reflex camera, which included a top-mounted focusing screen and which was often used by press photographers.
[2][1] He frequently made his first inspection of a site without any camera and endeavoured to talk to people at all levels of authority, collecting factual information to prepare before returning to take the photographs.