From Digital Camera World · · 2m
The photographer who catalogued a nation
August Sander built a method, not a style, and a new Cologne show proves how far it could stretch.
In brief
August Sander built a method, not a style, and a new Cologne show proves how far it could stretch. Sander's power came from applying one consistent method to wildly different people, which is why every portrait series with a plain background and a repeated pose still owes him something. Originally reported by Digital…
A name portrait shooters owe
If you photograph people for a living, August Sander is foundational. His decades-long project People of the 20th Century is a landmark of the form.
Cataloguing a whole society
Sander tried to record a cross-section of Germany by trade and social type. That template ran straight through Diane Arbus and the Bechers into portraiture at large.
You already use his method
Shot a series of people against the same plain backdrop, in the same pose, so the differences do the talking? That idea is his.
“you're standing on Sander's shoulders”
Famous, and still underrated
Being legendary for portraits has hidden the rest of his range. Weathered farmers, an outlandish artistic trio, a hand on a walking stick, all from the same eye.
A 150th birthday show
![August Sander: The Dadaist Raoul Hausmann [with Hedwig Mankiewitz and Vera Broïdo], 1929](https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/urPqcyMB22DtxdfxAj3bKg-1200-80.jpg)
August Sander: On His 150th Birthday draws mainly on the foundation's own collection in Cologne, home to the world's largest Sander archive since 1992.
Work almost nobody has seen
The exhibition adds early pictures from his Linz years and commissioned photographs from the Westerwald region that have rarely been shown.
Method, not style
His genius was a fixed approach applied to constantly shifting subjects. Musicians with their dogs lose the studio stiffness; a mother and child find tenderness inside a formal pose.
“a fixed method applied to constantly shifting subjects”
Hands tell the story
He watched the small details, not just the social label. In Studies, the Human Being and Man and Machine, the hand keeps returning as the central motif.
“Sander wasn't just cataloguing "German types"”
Home, Sardinia, and six talks
New to view: his own Cologne home and studio, 1930 to 1942/43, plus his single trip abroad. Six radio talks he wrote in 1931 play in the room. Runs to 24 January, €7.50.
The main idea
Sander's power came from applying one consistent method to wildly different people, which is why every portrait series with a plain background and a repeated pose still owes him something.
