20th century people

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August Sander - People of the 20th Century Link to the picture
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Right wall: Pictures from the trunk portfolio in the 2018/2019 exhibition “August Sander - Masterpieces. Photographs from 'People of the 20th Century' "

People of the 20th Century is a photo project by the photographer August Sander , which is assigned to the new objectivity . The concept of the work goes back to 1925, when Sander sketched the work in a handwritten draft and in a letter to Erich Stenger . His aim was to reproduce the portrayed people truthfully and in their entire psychology . The original photos and negatives are currently in the August Sander archive , which is maintained by the SK Stiftung Kultur in Cologne.

content

The book is divided into a so-called master folder and seven groups, which in turn are divided into a total of 45 folders, some of which in turn have a subdivision. Originally 12 portraits were planned for each portfolio. In the final published book, a total of 619 portraits are shown. Although well-known personalities are also shown, only a few are mentioned by name, mostly just their profession or status. Folder 36 occupies a special position because it contains pictures of individual or a few people, anonymous groups and also pure objects such as the Wuppertal suspension railway and the "Feurige Elias" ( foothills railway between Bonn and Cologne) are shown. In the editions of 2002 and 2010, all images are titled in three languages ​​in German, English and French. The pictures can be viewed via 'The August Sander Project'

Master folder
Group I.
The farmer
1 The young farmer
2 The farmer's child and the mother
3 farming family
4 The farmer - his life and work
5 types of farmers
6 The small townsperson
7 The sport
Group II
The Craftsman
8 The master craftsman
9 The industrialist
10 The worker - his life and work
11 types of workers - physical and mental
12 The technician and inventor
Group III
The woman
13 The woman and the man
14 The woman and the child
15 The family
16 The elegant woman
17 The woman in the spiritual and practical profession
Group IV
The stands
18 The student
19 The scholar
20 The official
21 The doctor and pharmacist
22 The judge and lawyer
23 The soldier
23a The National Socialist
24 The aristocrat
25 The clergyman
26 The teacher and educator
27 The merchant
28 The politician
Group v
The artists
29 The writer
30 The actor
31 The architect and building artist
32 The sculptor
33 The painter
34 The composer
35 The reproducing musician
Group VI
The city
36 The road - life and drive
37 Traveling people - fair and circus
38 Traveling people - gypsies and tramps
39 From the festivities
40 City youth
41 The servants
42 types and shapes of the big city
43 people who came to my door
44 persecuted
44a Political prisoners
44b foreign workers
Group VII
The last people
45 Idiots, sick, madmen and matter

At the beginning of the 20th century August Sander traveled regularly to the Hunsrück and the Westerwald to photograph the farmers and craftsmen there. This was his main source of income at the time. Almost all of the pictures in the portfolio and many of the first two groups (farmers and craftsmen) come from this fund. Some of his best-known pictures also come from this time, such as the picture 'Young farmers' from the first portfolio, even if it later turned out that the young men depicted were miners and at best part-time farmers. The pictures in the other portfolios are mostly from his time in Cologne.

Some of the pictures from the collection have been given an almost iconic status, such as the already mentioned picture “Young farmers” but also the pictures “Handlanger”, “Confectioner”, “Boxer” and “Pharmacist”.

Edition history

During Sander's lifetime, only excerpts and preliminary projects were published in book form or in exhibitions. The first concept of the project was handwritten by August Sander as early as 1925 and sent in a letter to Erich Stenger on July 21 of that year . The original of this letter is in the Agfa Collection of the Ludwig Collection. By 1927, the concept had been revised to the extent that it largely corresponded to the form that was implemented in the books of 2002 and 2010. An illustration of the typewritten concept with subsequent handwritten additions can be found in an essay by Gabriele Conrath-Scholl and Susanne Lange, which is printed both in the study volume for the seven-volume work edition and as an extended foreword in the one-volume edition from 2010. In his letter to Stenger, Sander stated that with the means of photography, “a mirror of the time can be created in which the portrayed people live.” In addition, he wanted to create portraits with the help of pure photography in order to “ensure that those concerned are absolutely truthful and in to reproduce their entire psychology. "

Preliminary projects

Preliminary projects during his lifetime

In 1927, 60 pictures were shown in an exhibition at the Kölnischer Kunstverein under the title Antlitz der Zeit , which were published in book form in 1929.

  • Face of time . Sixty recordings of German people from the 20th century. With an introductory essay by Alfred Döblin . Kurt Wolff Verlag / Transmare Verlag, Munich 1929.

This work was reprinted in 1959 in the edition of the Cultural Monthly magazine dedicated to Sanders, supplemented with texts by Golo Mann and Manuel Gasser ,

The plan to publish this work in an extended manner was pushed ahead and subscription plans were already in place. These plans had to be abandoned when the publisher Kurt Wolf sold the publishing house in 1930. Since the exhibition and the book 'The Face of Time' were not received positively in right-wing circles, Franz Evers noted that there was a lack of constructive force and went on: “The work is a revolt and obviously wants to be a revolt. [...] We also want to see a different face of time. A physiognomic collection of truly royal peasants ”. it was foreseeable that this work would not be promoted under the National Socialists. From 1936 the book Face of the Times could no longer be delivered and the printing blocks were destroyed.

In 1962 80 pictures were published in book form

  • German mirror. People of the 20th century With an introduction by Heinrich Lützeler . Sigbert Mohn Verlag, Gütersloh 1962.

Posthumous preliminary projects

After August Sander's death, his son Gunter (1907–1987) took over the estate and began a scientific analysis with the aim of u. a. to realize the project “People of the 20th Century”. The first result was the book

  • People without a mask with a biographical text by Gunter Sander and a foreword by Golo Mann CJ Bucher, Lucerne, 1971

which, however, only contained 234 of the 600 or so images projected by August Sander.

In the following years Gunter Sander continued his work on the project "People of the 20th Century" and was able to publish another book in 1980, this time containing 431 recordings. The order of the groups and folders was partly different than in the final edition.

  • August Sander People of the 20th Century: Portrait Photographs from 1892–1952 . Edited by Gunther Sander. Text by Ulrich Keller Schirmer-Mosel 1980

Posthumous edition of the work

In 1992, August Sander's grandson, Gerd Sander (* 1940), sold his estate to the Kulturstiftung Stadtsparkasse Köln, from which the SK Stiftung Kultur der Sparkasse KölnBonn emerged . This took place on the premise that the estate should be available for further research and that August Sander's projects should be published finally. In addition to people of the 20th century , it was in particular the Cologne as it was project , which was published by Emons Verlag in 2009 in collaboration with the Cologne City Museum .

The result of the work on “People of the 20th Century” was a seven-volume edition published in 2002, which was prepared with the collaboration of Gabriele Conrath Scholl, Susanne Lange, Gerd Sander, Claudia Schubert and Raijka Knippers. It contained 619 recordings. Of the total of around 11,000 surviving negatives in the August Sander Archive, around 2,000 negatives could be assigned to the People of the 20th Century project , 200 of them with direct handwritten references from August Sander to the negatives. In particular, the pictures in the master folder were explicitly named by August Sander during his lifetime and also in the Face of Time and Deutschenspiegel. Used by people of the 20th century . The remaining pictures could be identified on the basis of notes in the estate or from other collections. One of the above-mentioned groups was printed for each volume, the master folder was inserted in volume 1. A study volume with articles and articles was published for this issue. a. by Gabriele Conrath Scholl, Susanne Lange, Otto Dann , Janos Frecot , L. Fritz Gruber (who curated the exhibition of August Sander's pictures at the Photokina in 1951 ), Klaus Honnef and Hans-Georg Bögner . In terms of printing, the high-quality duotone process was used, which looks closer to an original print and takes Sanders' requirement into account that only one image is printed on the right per double page.

In 2010 a one-volume edition of the work was published, which is largely identical in content to the seven-volume edition. For this edition, the images were manually removed from the original negatives and partially retouched by Jean-Luc Differdange , who completed his photography training at the Sander Photo Studio. The differences were a partially different order of the pictures within the folders and that there was a deviation from showing only one picture per double page. The size was reduced to around 800 pages. Furthermore, the size of some images has been changed slightly in order to achieve a more balanced overall picture. The aim of these changes was to achieve “an insightful comparison and a proportional balance”. Only in the case of the master folder was the concept that one image should be shown per double page. There was a change in content because in the 2002 edition the picture of the painter Filippo Figari was wrongly assigned to his brother Renato and was shown in the folder The Judge and Lawyer . in the 2010 edition this picture was then placed in the folder The Painter .

reception

Reviews in the popular media

Since the publication of the book in the form Sander envisaged, it has received several reviews.

  • Konstanze Crüwell wrote in the Frankfurter Allgemeine : “August Sander tried to depict types, that is, typical representatives of a certain professional or social class. And he apparently succeeded in getting very close to his subjects, which is evident in the artistic added value of these haunting images of people: Some portraits appear so lively, so attractive or repulsive in their individuality that we almost think we can imagine their story "
  • Susanne Böckers noted in the Cologne city of Anzeiger : “As for Sander's intention to use purely photographic means and based on scientific methods to create a physiognomic picture of time, not only has time run out for him over the decades. In spite of the apparently rigid concept, he did not even try to make a sociologically sound, objective selection of images, but instead was always strongly guided by his artistic point of view. Over the years he may well have recognized that the project could not be completed in principle - which did not prevent him from continuing to deal with the matter, true to his work motto of seeing, observing and thinking "
  • Thomas Hummitzsch wrote in “Glanz & Elend Magazin für Literatur und Zeitkritik”: “From today's point of view, Sander's work is not without controversy taken over by the National Socialists. August Sander is the Friedrich Nietzsche of photography. "
  • Claudia Gabriele Philipp wrote about the 1980 edition “It was not until 16 years after his death, since Sander is now also internationally recognized as a 'Balzac of Photography' ('Le Figaro'), that a serious attempt is made to exercise his will as far as possible to execute [...] The present publication gives an idea of ​​what August Sander wanted [...] Sander never finished his planned life's work, he was constantly busy rearranging, rearranging, selecting and discarding "
  • Behrang Samsami wrote on Literaturkritik.de: “August Sanders 'People of the 20th Century' is a classic in the history of photography. No one else in his guild has created a work that is similar to his in conception, scope and time of creation. "

Scientific reception

  • Johannes Kirschenmann, Bettina Uhlig “Type. Habitus. Human - portraits of Wilhelm Leibl, August Sander and Gillian Wearing "
  • Annika Baacke “Photography between Art and Documentation”.
  • Gerhard Schweppenhäuser "Sander's Social Portraits: The Insistence of the Estates Society at the End of the Liberal Era and the Return of the Universal Controversy in Portrait Photography of the 20th Century"

Reception by colleagues

Many photographers see themselves in the tradition of Sander and his work, especially with their images of people:

  • Jim Rakete names Sander as one of his role models, especially because of his human photography
  • Irving Penn was influenced by Sander's portraits of characters.
  • At first glance, Diane Arbus , stylistically very different, described August Sander as an important mentor for her own visual work.
  • For Judith Joy Ross , the work People of the 20th Century is the inspiration for her portrait photography
  • Along with Diane Arbus, Rineke Dijkstra names Sander "as one of her sources of inspiration in the field of photography"
  • Gabriele and Helmut Nothhelfer have "created a German social panorama that has legitimately evoked many associations with the portrait work People of the 20th Century by August Sander, which became famous in the 1920s"
  • Mette Tronvoll also sees herself in the tradition of Sanders and the New Objectivity "I relate as much to August Sander and the neo-objectivist tradition as to a contemporary scene concerned with close reality and subjective experiences."

The August Sander Project

Sarah H. Meister ( The Museum of Modern Art (MoMa)) and Noam M. Elcott ( Columbia University ) lead the five-year project The August Sander Project. As part of the project, nine to ten leading curators are appointed every year over five years, Historians and artists have been invited to the MoMa to present their knowledge and insights into the project “People of the 20th Century” in a one-day event in front of an 'intimate group' of around 50 invited experts, artists and curators. Four events have been held so far:

  • 16th September, 2016
  • 15th September, 2017
  • September 14, 2018
  • 13th September 2019

So far (August 2020) it was not known whether a meeting will take place in 2020.

Some summaries of the lectures are available from MoMa.

Exhibitions

  • Joint exhibition of Cologne artists 1st Cologne Art Association "Fine Arts in Cologne 1927"
  • August Sander: Masterpieces - Photographs from 'People of the 20th Century' , Cologne Photographische Sammlung / SK Stiftung Kultur Im Mediapark, 7 September 2018 to 27 January 2019
  • August Sander. Photographs from "People of the 20th Century" . Kunstmuseum Kloster Unser Lieben Frauen, Magdeburg, April 11th to June 15th, 2017
  • August Sander. Icons of the portrait work “People of the 20th Century” . Center national de l'audiovisuel Dudelange, Luxembourg, 29 June to 29 September 2010
  • August Sander. 20th century people . Fotomuseum Winterthur , January 19 to March 24, 2002; further positions: Rupertinum Salzburg, May 26th - July 21st, 2002; San Francisco Museum of Art, November 29, 2002 - February 23, 2003; Martin-Gropius-Bau Berlin, October 10, 2003 - January 11, 2004; Städel Museum, Frankfurt am Main: March 16 - May 2, 2004; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, May 25-September 19, 2004.
  • August Sander. 20th century people . Room 1, 2, Cologne Photographische Sammlung / SK Stiftung Kultur Im Mediapark, September 21 to November 18, 2001

expenditure

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ August Sander Fotograf (1876-1964) biography of Gabriele Conrath-Scholl, accessed on June 19, 2020
  2. ↑ a b c d e f g h i "August Sander: People of the 20th Century" A concept in its development - by Gabriele Conrath-Scholl and Susanne Lange in the study volume for the seven-volume edition of People of the 20th Century 2002
  3. ↑ Photography as a means of artistic expression Jule Schaffer about her work at the SK Stiftung Kultur, accessed on June 19, 2020
  4. ↑ a b c d e f g Editorial preliminary remarks on the revised new edition of August Sander's People of the 20th Century by Gabriele Conrath-Scholl
  5. ↑ August Sander - People of the 20th Century. Retrieved August 11, 2020
  6. ↑ The "young farmers" of August Sander on the trail of Reinhard Pabst FazNet from April 23, 2014, accessed on August 9, 2020
  7. ^ Editions August Sander of the SK Stiftung Kultur accessed on August 7, 2020
  8. ↑ Franz Evers “Phsiognomische Querschnitte” in: Der Tag September 4, 1930
  9. ↑ Broadcast 'WestArt' August Sander: People of the 20th Century from February 18, 2009, accessed on June 19, 2020
  10. ↑ Entry by Gerd Sander in fotografenwiki.org accessed on August 2, 2020
  11. ↑ Cologne as it was from Emons Verlag, accessed on August 2, 2020
  12. ↑ Seven-volume edition, ISBN 3-8296-0006-2 , Schirmer / Mosel 2002
  13. ↑ Study volume on the seven-volume editions of Menschen des 20. Jahrhundert Schirmer / Mosel 2002, ISBN 3-8296-0024-0 .
  14. ↑ People of the 20th Century Schirmer / Mosel 2010, ISBN 9783829605007
  15. ↑ August Sander - Menschen des 20. Jahrhundert Press release of the publisher, accessed on August 6, 2020
  16. ↑ The Face of the 20th Century Konstanze Crüwell FAZ updated on March 16, 2004, accessed on August 12, 2020
  17. ↑ Seeing, observing, thinking - The Photographische Sammlung / SK-Stiftung Kultur in Cologne presents the results of many years of Sander research. Susanne Böckers in Kölner Stadt Anzeiger September 24, 2001, accessed on August 12, 2020
  18. ^ Photographic cultural history accessed on August 6, 2020
  19. ↑ Claudia Gabriele Philipp People of the 20th Century, accessed on June 19, 2020
  20. ↑ Seeing, comparing and thinking The new edition of August Sander's monumental photographic work “People of the 20th Century”, accessed on August 6, 2020
  21. ↑ type. Johannes Kirschenmann, Bettina Uhlig, Habitus. Mensch, portraits by Wilhelm Leibl, August Sander and Gillian Wearing KUNST + UNTERRICHT pages 387 • 388, 2014 accessed on June 19, 2020
  22. ↑ Annika Baacke, Photography between Art and Documentation Dissertation at the Department of History and Cultural Studies at the Free University of Berlin, June 2013, accessed on June 19, 2020
  23. ^ JB Metzler: Sander's social portraits: The insistence of the estates society at the end of the liberal era and the return of the universal dispute in portrait photography of the 20th century. In: Revisions of Realism. Treatises on Philosophy. 2018, p. 17-67 , doi : 10.1007 / 978-3-476-04628-4_1 .
  24. ↑ If you talk too much, you block the possibilities Photographer Jim Rakete: 60th birthday Interview in the Süddeutsche Zeitung January 1, 2011, accessed on July 1, 2020
  25. ↑ Irving Penn was the last classic of the photographic art Obituary for Irving Penn in Welt magazine on October 9, 2009, accessed on July 1, 2020
  26. ↑ With Different Eyes - The Portrait in Contemporary Photography / Diane Arbus Kunsthalle Nürnberg from October 14, 2016 to January 15, 2017, accessed on July 1, 2020
  27. ↑ With openness and respect - photographs by Judith Joy Ross photoscala October 13, 2011, accessed August 1, 2020
  28. ↑ Nanni Harbordt “Rineke Dijkstra - In Search of Authenticity”, accessed on August 4, 2020
  29. ↑ Gabriele and Helmut Nothhelfer in the Photographic Collection of SK-Kultur, accessed on August 4, 2020
  30. ↑ Mette Tronvoll New Portraits, 2000-2002, accessed on August 4, 2020
  31. ↑ a b Description of the Sander Project on the MoMa website, accessed on August
  32. ^ The August Sander Project, accessed August 11, 2020 in 2016
  33. ↑ The August Sander Project, accessed August 11, 2020 in 2017
  34. ↑ The August Sander Project, accessed August 11, 2020 , 2018
  35. ↑ The August Sander Project, accessed August 11, 2020 in 2019
  36. ^ Exhibition of the Culture Foundation in the Mediapark from September 7, 2018 to January 27, 2019, accessed on June 19, 2020
  37. ↑ August Sander: Icons from the portrait work 'People of the 20th Century' - Center National de l'Audiovisuel // Luxembourg - Juillet 2010. Accessed on June 28, 2020 (French).
  38. ↑ August Sander - People of the 20th Century - Exhibitions - Discover - Fotomuseum Winterthur. Retrieved June 28, 2020 (Swiss Standard German).
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