August Sander: German Portraits and Documentary Photography of the 20th Century
August Sander (1876 - 1964) was a photographer of the German scene in the 20th century, now one of the most renowned in the German area of that era.
The preceding period had seen various photographers unite in the effort to experiment with the limits of photography, mainly with the objective of gaining acceptance in the art world as a true means of expression and not just a scientific gimmick for reproducing images through a lens.
Sander represents the generation immediately following Pictorialism, which, despite being surpassed, extends until 1940 and influences the photographer's work through a series of elements.
August's career began in 1911 and fully matured in 1920. He was a very prolific photographer, and his subjects ranged from landscapes to photojournalism, documentary, and street photography. However, it is his portraiture that left the greatest impact and made him famous. His attention to the human experience led him to publish "People of the 20th Century" in 1911 and "Faces of Our Time" in 1929.
Sander became part of the Cologne Progressive group, which advocated for the idea of a New Objectivity, seen as very radical within their historical context. August chose to photograph not only subjects from the middle and upper classes but also workers, beggars, and humble laborers such as bakers and bricklayers. These are shots that we are now accustomed to seeing much more often and that integrate into our normal daily life, but at the time, they represented a controversial yet deliberate choice.
His subjects and style would be taken up in the following years and in other places by the photography of Diane Arbus, who often cited August Sander among her greatest influences (a clear example is the fascination both had for circus performers). The connections between the two photographers are evident on several levels.
Sander is one of the first photographers to immortalize people who do not fit the norms of normality, especially for the 1920s, and the first to find beauty and interest in them. In these images, we see some of the most common characteristics of Pictorialism, such as the reduced depth of field, which results in a blurred effect, almost as if the subjects are in front of a painting, sharp in contrast to the background.
Sander plays with strangeness even in terms of the proportions between the subject elements, conveying a sensation that is almost hallucinatory. These are elements of progressivism, thoughtful and reflective, not improvised, like the doll that seems to walk next to the child on the toy horse and, precisely for this reason, at first glance, seems like a small human being.
In his work, we can note a certain recurrence in the use of two subjects together, a formula that would become a distinctive trait of August, which Diane Arbus would later observe with great interest. Another interesting characteristic that can be glimpsed in both is the presence of androgyny, which blurs the boundaries between masculine and feminine, intentionally or not.
The faces in his photographs convey a certain unease, undoubtedly a product of the post-war historical period and the economic crisis. In this, Sander manages to place people of all social classes on the same level, which led to his great success at least until the advent of Nazism and his inclusion in the list of "degenerate" artists. He retired to the countryside until 1951, mainly to save his negatives from destruction, and was rediscovered during an international photography fair. Upon his death in 1964, Sander left as his heirs, with Arbus at the forefront, all these faces that stare at us from another time and that (still) seem to have something to say.
