August Sanders

Sanders was a German photographer. He first started working with photography in Germany and Austria, but due to the Nazi regime much of his work was restricted. His first book was named ‘Face of our Time’ and contained 60 portraits from his series ‘People of the 20th Century’. Much of his work was destroyed by Nazi’s and they made it very difficult for him to work and preserve his negatives. He worked with all genres of photography but he is most well known and greatly appreciated for his portraits. His images identified different German characters and their different professions and roles in society. His images are so precise and accurate and have been a massive influence on many generations of photographers. A man named Graeme Mitchell talks on his blog of how Sanders at the time would have been unaware of art: “August Sander, who taking these portraits during the first half of the last century would have had little to no concern at all with art, but rather his concerns were of a documentation of a scientific sorts, a photographic record of the German people. When I look at these I wonder if he knew how good he was, how original…if he understood even partially the lasting influence he’d have on photographers of the genre to this day.” For me this quote represents exactly how I feel. Sanders was not trying to be over fancy or creative, he simply wanted to document his people, which works so perfectly and leaves a lasting impression. When you see his images and look into the eyes of the subjects you get a feeling for how their life must have been and how they must have felt living in the environment that they were in. It’s very hard to create such a connection between the subject and the viewer but Sanders was very talented and knew just how to capture someone’s emotions, from innocent to pride to worry.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/August_Sander
graememitchell.com/blog/august-sander
caraphillips.wordpress.com/.../august-sander/
humanitieslab.stanford.edu/TenThings/39