"We know that people are formed by the light and air, by their inherited traits, and their actions. We can tell from appearance the work someone does or does not do; we can read in his face whether he is happy or troubled." (August Sander)
August Sander, Bricklayer, 1928
August Sander (1876-1964) was born in Herdorf, near Cologne, Germany, the son of a mining carpenter. The young Sander began an apprenticeship as a miner. From 1890 to 1896 he worked on the mining waste tip at Herdorf iron ore mine. He received a camera from an uncle in 1892, built a darkroom, and began to photograph in his spare time. After military service, he toured Germany as a commercial photographer specializing in architectural and industrial photos. In 1901 he was employed by the Photographic Studio Graf in Linz, Austria. He and a partner bought this concern the following year and renamed it Studio Sander and Stuckenberg. Two years later he bought out his partner and started the August Sander Studio for Pictorial Arts of Photography and Painting.
August Sander, Young peasants, Westerwald, on their way to a dance, 1913. "These people, whose way of life I had known from my youth, appealed to me because of their closeness to nature," wrote August Sander of the farmers who were among his first subjects.
Sander was awarded a gold medal and Cross of Honor at the Paris Exposition of 1904, the first of hundreds of such awards he would receive in his career. After selling his studio in Linz, Sander moved his family to Trier and then to Lindenthall, a suburb of Cologne. While photographing peasants in nearby Westerwald (above), Sander originated his life-project, People in the Twentieth Century. Sander served in the German Army during World War I but continued to photograph. He began teaching apprentices and other students in 1919.
In this family portrait (1902-3), August Sander is seated at far right. His wife, Anna, stands behind him.
In 1927 Sander travelled to Sardinia to photograph the people and landscapes. This was his only trip outside Germany. Late that year he showed 60 photographs from the People in the Twentieth Century series in the Cologne Kunstverein exhibition. This show led to an agreement with publisher Kurt Wolff to issue books covering the entire project. The first of these volumes, Face of Our Time, appeared in 1929 with an introduction by Alfred Döblin.
August Sander, Lawyer, c. 1925
In People of the 20th Century, Sander put together hundreds of portraits of people from different levels of society and occupational groups in a series of portfolios developed in a project spanning decades. Face of Our Time was enthusiastically received, as can be seen from reviews by such commentators as Kurt Tucholsky, Thomas Mann and Walter Benjamin, who pointed in particular to the work's informative impact in the light of the threat of National Socialist rule. Today, that insight reads like a premonition of what was to come.
August Sander, Reichswehr soldier, 1928
Stating that "we know that people are formed by the light and air, by their inherited traits, and their actions. We can tell from appearance the work someone does or does not do; we can read in his face whether he is happy or troubled," Sander photographed subjects from all walks of life and created a typological catalogue of more than six hundred photographs of the German people.
August Sander, Part-time students, 1926
Portrait of August Sander after His Nap, after 1936. Sander's mussed hair and crumpled suit reveal his slightly dazed state was probably taken by one of his assistants. Rather than residing in the artists' section of his People of the Twentieth Century, this portrait of Sander, who considered himself a city type, is found in the context of service professionals.
Sander began a series of Rhineland landscapes and nature studies in 1935 on which he worked for the rest of his life. During World War II he made prints of pre-war photographs for families of men who had died or were missing in action. His studio was destroyed by allied bombs, and thousands of negatives were destroyed. Despite these setbacks, Sander continued to work on a variety of special projects and books.
Imogen Cunningham, August Sander, Photographer, and His House, Leuscheid, Germany, 1960
In 1951 Sander's work was mounted at the first exhibition at Photokina. His documentation of pre-war Cologne was bought by the city the same year. A number of his photographs were selected by Edward Steichen in 1952 for inclusion in the Family of Man show of 1955. Sander was named an honorary member of the German Photographic Society in 1958 and was given a one-man show by that body the following year. He received the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany in 1960. Sander suffered a stroke in late 1963 and died in Cologne some months later.
August Sander, Socialist Leader Paul Fröhlich, 1929
The great breakthrough in his public reputation, attested to by the retrospective mounted in 1969 by the Museum of Modern Art in New York, occurred only after his death. In a letter to Paul Fröhlich (leader of the leftist Sozialistische Arbeiterpartei/SAP, above) Sander wrote, “The work, which is more depiction than criticism, will provide some insight into our age and its people, and the more the time passes, the more valuable it will become.” He was not mistaken. You can read more about August Sander here.
August Sander, Proletarian Intellectuals [Else Schuler, Tristan Rèmy, Franz Seiwert, Gerd Arntz], ca. 1925
Sander engaged in an intense exchange with other artists – especially the Cologne Progressives led by Heinrich Hoerle and Franz Wilhelm Seiwert – for whom he undertook innumerable photographic projects.
August Sander, Painter [Gottfried Brockmann], 1924
Gottfried Brockmann was a member of the Cologne Progressives. His work is characterized by puppets, and figurines. Portrayed standing before a canvas in a painter's smock with his hair freshly shorn, Brockmann conjures the archetypal artist persona. His far-off gaze lends him an ambiguity similar to that of the subjects in his own paintings.
August Sander, The Painter Gerd Arntz, 1929
Gottfried Brockmann, The Existence of a Cripple, No. 4 (Krüppeldasein IV), 1922
As a revolutionary artist, Gerd Arntz joined the Cologne based Gruppe progressiver Künstler Köln (Group of Progressive Cologne Artists). With his comrades Franz Seiwert and Heinrich Hoerle, he read Marxist and anarchist literature and developed his own style of portraying society as segregated in classes and depicted the life of workers and the class struggle in abstracted figures on woodcuts.
Gerd Arntz, Vornehme Straße, 1924
August Sander, Painter [Anton Räderscheidt], c. 1925
August Sander, Painter [Franz Maria Jansen], c. 1925
Franz M. Jansen, Masks, 1925
August Sander, The Painter Heinrich Hoerle, 1928
Anton Räderscheidt was born in Cologne. Many of the works Räderscheidt produced in the 1920s depict a stiffly posed, isolated couple that usually bear the features of Räderscheidt and his wife, the painter Martha Hegemann. The way his mannequin-like figures stand detached from their environment and from each other is brilliantly reflected in the above portrait. Räderscheidt's works from this era are rare, because most of them were either seized by the Nazis as degenerate art and destroyed, or were destroyed in Allied bombing raids.
Anton Räderscheidt, The Painter Heinrich Maria Davringhausen, 1928
The Cologne-based Franz Maria Jansen wrote the 1918 manifesto About Expressionism, which encouraged artists to embrace activism and the subjects of modern life. Committed to social and political subjects, he was a member of the German Association of Artists. He exhibited widely until the National Socialists confiscated most of his works from museums.
Hoerle studied at the Cologne School of Arts and Crafts but was mostly self-taught as an artist. After military service in World War I he became active in the Cologne Dada scene, publishing in 1920 the Krüppelmappe (Cripples Portfolio). He adopted a figurative constructivist style influenced by Vladimir Tatlin and El Lissitzky and by the Dutch movement De Stijl.
Heinrich Hoerle, Masks, 1929
August Sander, Sylvia von Harden, Journaliste, c. 1925
Sylvia von Harden (1894-1963) was a journalist and poet. During her career as a journalist, she wrote for many newspapers in Germany and England. During the 1920s she lived in Berlin, and published two volumes of poetry in 1920 and 1927. In 1933, von Harden left Germany for self-exile in England. Today, she is best remembered by Otto Dix's iconic portrait:
Otto Dix, Portrait of the Journalist Sylvia von Harden, 1926
August Sander, Otto Dix with wife Martha, c. 1925
August Sander, The Wife of Painter Peter Abelen, 1926
August Sander, The Painter Jankel Adler, 1929
August Sander, Architect Hans Heinz Lüttgen and his Wife Dora, c. 1925
After his studies Jankel Adler spent time in Poland, Berlin and Paris. In 1922, he moved to Düsseldorf. There he became a teacher at the Academy of Arts, and became acquainted with Paul Klee, who influenced his work. Both artists belonged to the artists group "Junges Rheinland". He also befriended Anton Räderscheidt and August Sander.
Jankel Adler, Portrait of a Man, 1923
August Sander, Raoul Hausmann, c. 1925
At the beginning of 1920, Raoul Hausmann (Dadasopher) Johannes Baader (Chief-Dada), and Richard Huelsenbeck (World-Dada) embarked on a six week tour of Eastern Germany and Czechoslovakia, drawing large crowds of up to 2000 people and bemused reviews. The programme included primitivist verse, simultaneous poetry recitals by Baader and Hausmann, and Hausmann's Dada-Trot (Sixty-One Step) described as "a truly splendid set-up of the most modern exotic-erotic social dances that have befallen us like a plague."
Raoul Hausmann, Mechanical Head (Spirit of Our Age), c. 1920
Sander placed his portrait of Raoul Hausmann in his portfolio of technicians and inventors to conclude the section on skilled tradesmen in People of the Twentieth Century. He might also have chosen to place Hausmann in the section on artists, but the categories he created - architect, sculptor, painter - did not accommodate the inventiveness of Hausmann's work: photo collage, sound poems, and other forms of expression that embraced new technologies.
August Sander, Writer [Karl August Wittfogel], 1926
Wittfogel wrote about Chinese history and culture. He joined the Communist Party in 1920 and worked from 1925 to 1933 at the Frankfurt Institute for Social Research, where he became immersed in Marxist studies. An outspoken critic of Fascism, Wittfogel was imprisoned by the National Socialists and later released following international protest.
Leo Breuer, The Coal Carrier, 1931
August Sander, Erich Mühsam, c. 1925 [mid - Writer & Anarchist - Murdered 1934 in Oranienburg Concentration Camp]
August Sander, Police Sergeant, 1926
August Sander, Savings Bank Cashier, Cologne, 1928
"In reality his head is a calculator, his arms respectively a pencil and a pen stand, his legs two rulers, and his body a ledger." Written in 1923, this quote evinces one author's view of institutional staff members such as the savings bank cashier in this portrait. August Sander intended this image of a stern bank clerk to be part of his portfolio entitled "The Official."
Albert Birkle,Telegraph Operator, 1920s
August Sander, Bailiff, c. 1925
August Sander, Teacher, c. 1925
August Sander, High school boys celebrating the Kaiser´s birthday, 1915
August Sander, Protestant Priest, 1928
August Sander, Member of Parliament (Democrat), 1928
August Sander, Boxers, c. 1925
August Sander, Gypsy, c. 1930
August Sander, Indian Man and German Woman, 1926
Included in the portfolio devoted to educators, this clergyman demonstrates some of the religious values prescribed by the modern German school system. Cloaked in formal garments, he echoes the rigidity of his young students, who stand obediently in crisp uniforms.
Businessman and parliamentarian Johannes Scheerer was one of the many individuals at the fringes of the political spectrum. He shoulders his umbrella like a shotgun, measuring up the viewer with an owlish, suspicious glance. Behind this formidable facade lurks a character more akin to a provinical schoolmaster than a legislator.
August Sander, Deputy of a Splinter Party, 1931
Photographed during the most unstable period of the Weimar Republic, this man is a deputy of one of the numerous political factions that emerged as support for Hitler increased. Although Sander knew the names and party affiliations of the various politicians, he conveyed a sense of neutrality with his titles.
August Sander, Bank Official, 1932
The German economy fluctuated dramatically during the Weimar Republic, causing the banking system to dissolve so rapidly that by 1932 more than six million Germans were unemployed. The self-assured manner of this bank official leaves little trace of the desperate financial situation.
August Sander, SS Storm Trooper Chief, 1937
This image was made at Cologne's central train station, with the neo-Gothic cathedral as a backdrop. Sander photographed the SS chief as if the man were just another specimen in his typological catalogue.
August Sander, Blind Children, c. 1930
Sander made this picture at a home for the blind. He categorized disabled people along with the ill and the insane as "The Last People."
August Sander, Victim of an Explosion, c. 1930
August Sander, Coal Carrier, Berlin, 1929
August Sander, Cleaning Woman, Cologne, 1927
August Sander, Taxi Driver, 1929
After nearly thirty years of creating sweet-looking, posed studio portraits, August Sander declared: "From now on I only want the honest truth about our time and people." This image illustrates the direction in which his style would develop.
August Sander, Aviator, c. 1925
August Sander, Unemployed Man, 1928
Anticipating Germany's economic decline, Sander poignantly ended his book Face of the Time with a picture of an unemployed man loitering on a street corner.
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