August Sander
«Menschen des 20. Jahrhunderts»

With his portrait project conceived in the second half of the 1920s, August Sander wanted to create a physiognomic depiction of the social structure of his time. The basis for this were portraits of people from all walks of professional life, and images of the urban and rural population. Sander divided the portraits into seven groups («The Farmer,» «The Craftsman,» «The Woman,» «People of Class,» «Artists,» «The Metropolis,» «The Last People») that he assigned to different portfolios. Sander’s topical divisions created a comparing system intended to make specific social groups visible within the oeuvre of his portrayed subjects. The individual portraits were taken with a camera that used plates and often shot outdoors with natural light. For the staging of the pose, the photographer restrained himself thus granting his models more room for self-presentation. Despite the project’s sociological intent, the portrayed subjects are never standardized to types, but instead emerge as recognizable statements of their own individuality. Although the model of society established in Sander’s divisions failed to be an all-conclusive social analysis of the Weimar Period, representing an entire society in photographs, his work has had an enduring influence on contemporary portrait-making concepts. Most recently, the artist Fiona Tan embraced Sander’s visual concept in her «Coutenance» video project at the documenta 11.