August Sander (17 November 1876 – 20 April 1964) was a German portrait and documentary photographer. His first book Face of our Time (German: Antlitz der Zeit) was published in 1929. Sander has been described as "the most important German portrait photographer of the early twentieth century". 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 20th Century. In this series, he aims to show a cross-section of society during the Weimar Republic.

Early life

Sander was born on 17 November 1876, in Herdorf, the son of a carpenter working in the mining industry. He had six siblings.

thumb|German Deciduous Forest, Krefeld (1939), [[The Phillips Collection]]

In the early 1920s, he came in contact with the Cologne Progressives, a radical group of artists linked to the workers' movement, which, as Wieland Schmied put it, <blockquote>"sought to combine constructivism and objectivity, geometry and object, the general and the particular, avant-garde conviction and political engagement, and which perhaps approximated most to the forward looking of New Objectivity [...] ". </blockquote>In 1927, Sander and writer Ludwig Mathar travelled through Sardinia for three months,

In 1953, Sander sold a portfolio of 408 photographs of Cologne, taken between 1920 and 1939, to the Kölnisches Stadtmuseum. These would be posthumously published in book format in 1988, under the title Köln wie es war (Cologne as it was).

In 1962, 80 photographs from the People of the 20th Century project were published in book format, under the name Deutschenspiegel. Menschen des 20. Jahrhunderts (German Mirror. People of the 20th Century).

Personal life and death

Sander married Anna Seitenmacher in 1902. She gave birth to Erich (son, born in 1903) and Gunther (son, born in 1907), and twins in 1911, Sigrid and Helmut; only Sigrid survived.

thumb|Memorial plaque at his residence in Cologne

thumb|Sander's grave, Melaten Cemetery, Cologne

Sander died in Cologne of a stroke on 20 April 1964. He was buried next to his son Erich in Cologne's Melaten Cemetery.

In Wim Wenders' 1987 film ("Wings of Desire"), the character Homer (played by Curt Bois) studies the portraits of People of the 20th Century (1980 edition) while visiting a library.

In 2008, the Mercury crater Sander was named after him.

The highest price reached by one of his photographs was when Bricklayer sold by $ at Sotheby's New York, on 11 December 2014.

Ownership rights

In 1992, Gerd Sander, August's grandson, sold the archive to German nonprofit art foundation SK Stiftung Kultur. It is on display at Die Photographische Sammlung/SK Stiftung Kultur. The claim has been disputed by SK Stiftung Kultur, and the ownership dispute is still ongoing.

Publications

  • (234 images)
  • (431 pages, hardcover edition) (A 1994 softcover exists as well under ISBN 3-8881-4723-9 / 978-3-88814723-4.)
  • (208 pages, 695 images, hardcover with protective sheet.)
  • (1436 pages, 619 tritone images, hardcover edition of 7 volumes in slipcase. Volume I (The farmer): 272 pages/115 images. Volume II (The skilled tradesman): 152 pages/63 images. Volume III (The woman): 172 pages/74 images. Volume IV (Classes and professions): 280 pages/127 images. Volume V (The artists): 204 pages/90 images. Volume VI (The city): 300 pages/134 images. Volume VII (The last people): 56 pages/16 images.); (1400 pages, hardcover edition of 7 volumes in slipcase.). A French-only edition named and a Spanish-only edition named exist as well.
  • (Hardcover); (808 pages<!-- 23.83 x 29.69 x 5.72 cm -->, 619 duotone images, hardcover). (Reprinted in 2021.)

Collections

Sander's work is held in the following permanent collection:

  • Museum of Modern Art, New York: 748 works (as of 31 December 2022)
  • Tate, UK: 5 prints (as of 31 December 2022)
  • Metropolitan Museum of Art: 119 prints
  • National Gallery of Art, Washington DC: 17 prints
  • J. Paul Getty Museum

Exhibitions

  • August Sander—Photographs of an Epoch, 1904–1959, Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1980 and Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 1982, among others.
  • August Sander: People of the Twentieth Century—A Photographic Portrait of Germany, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 2004
  • August Sander, People of the 20th Century, São Paulo Art Biennial, Brazil, 2012
  • Portrait.Landscape.Architecture, Multimedia Art Museum, Moscow, 2013
  • Portraying a Nation: Germany 1919–1933, Tate Liverpool. Paired with work by Otto Dix.

See also

  • August Sander Archive
  • Ismo Hölttö
  • Listing of collections holding work by Sander

References

Further reading

  • (2+288+2 pages)
  • (109+3 pages)
  • August Sander artist profile on Ocula