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New Exhibition Showcases August Sander’s Portraits of Early 20th-Century Germans
August Sander (1876-1964) began an enormous undertaking in the mid-1920’s with his Menschen des 20. Jahrhunderts (People of the 20th Century) project. His goal was to create a social portrait of the German population by documenting his contemporaries in photographs. “August Sander: People of the 20th Century: Portraits of German Citizens 1910-1940,” which is on view at the Kathleen Ewing Gallery until October 27, exhibits new gelatin silver prints of works from this time period, such as this well-known image of the bricklayer balancing his heavy load (above).
Sander photographed people from all classes and walks of life, thereby revealing the structure of early twentieth-century German society. He strove to record his direct observations and achieve photographic objectivity. ''It is not my intention either to criticize or to describe these people, but to create a piece of history with my pictures,” he wrote.
In his book Antlitz der Zeit (Face of Our Time) he compiled a volume of 60 portraits, which he categorized into archetypal groups such as The Farmer and The Woman. Although historically typological categorization has been used to reinforce social prejudices, Sander was neither a Nazi nor a social scientist. His efforts revealed many similarities between the various groups, while the strong sense of individualism inherent in each image curtailed attempts to categorize or classify the subjects. This may have been why the printing plates of the book were confiscated and destroyed by the Nazis in 1936. The negatives of these photographs, however, have fortunately survived. Around this point in time and perhaps because of these difficulties, Sander turned his focus more to landscape photography, a field which he had also been working in since the beginning of his career. Although Sander’s monumental project was never fully realized, the images are a testament to the emerging individualism of the twentieth century. The directness of Sander’s photography and the artistic standards he set greatly influenced subsequent generations of international photographers, including Walker Evans, Diane Arbus, and Bernd and Hilla Becher. The exhibition is on view at the Kathleen Ewing Gallery, 1767 P Street NW, 2nd Floor, Washington, DC from Tuesday to Saturday, 11:00 to 6:00, and by appointment until October 27, 2007. With more than 4,500 original prints and around 11,000 glass negatives, the August Sander Archive, Die Photographische Sammlung/SK Stiftung Kultur in Cologne, Germany, contains the most extensive collection of Sander’s works. September 19, 2007 Link
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