Photographers I admire - Part 1: August Sander

• German Portrait and Documentary Photographer
• 17 November 1876-20 April 1986
• Regarded as “the most important German portrait Photographer of the early twentieth century” (Michael Collins, Record Pictures (Thomas Telford Publishing, 2004), p. 1842 )
• first book “Face of our Time” (German: Antlitz der Zeit) was published in 1929. 
• Known for his “people of the 20th century” project,that spanned the majority of his career

Technique and aesthetic styling

• Sander did not use the newly invented Leica camera. Instead he remained devoted to an old-fashioned large-format camera, glass negatives and long exposure times. This allowed him to capture minute details of individual faces.
• his portraits were anonymous. Shot against neutral backgrounds and titled more often than not by profession alone, he let the images – and the faces in them – speak for themselves.

Influence and Legacy

• One of the pioneers of Documentary/social commentative photography
• The ambition and reach of “People of the 20th Century” (both in terms of the quality of his photography and in his representation of a cross-section of society) made him a monumental figure of twentieth century photography.
• The work of conceptual artists such as Bernd and Hilla Becher and Rineke Dijkstra, resonates with the influence of August Sander’s career-long project.

“The portrait is your mirror. It’s you.”

~August Sander