Farmer’s Children, Westerwald by August Sander

August Sander (1876 –1964) was a German portrait and documentary photographer. Sander’s work includes landscape, nature, architecture, and street photography, but he is best known for his portraits, as exemplified by his series People of the Twentieth Century. In this series, Sanders aims to show a cross-section of society during the Weimar Republic. The series is divided into seven sections: The Farmer, The Skilled Tradesman, Woman, Classes and Professions, The Artists, The City, and The Last People (homeless persons, veterans, etc.).

Sander’s first book Antlitz der Zeit (Face of our Time) was published in 1929. By 1945, Sander’s archive included over 40,000 images. Although the Nazis confiscated the first publication of Sander’s work, and the majority of his negatives were later destroyed by fire, approximately 1,800 portrait negatives for People of the Twentieth Century survived, as well as Sander’s notes and plans. Together with the existing vintage prints, they have provided the basis for the current reconstruction of Sander’s ambitious project in book and exhibition form.

In 2002, the August Sander Archiv’s Susanne Lange and the artist’s grandson, Gerd Sander, published a seven-volume collection comprising some 619 of Sander’s photographs (August Sander: People of the Twentieth Century, Harry N. Abrams).

Adapted from AugustSander.com and metmuseum.org