AUGUST SANDER PRESENTATION.

    This week's group presentation was on August Sanders (1876-1964). He was born in Germany and received his first camera in 1892. He then went on to build a dark room and tour Germany as a commercial photographer, before being employed as an assistant in Austria where he and his partner bought a studio in order to explore his own themes, but then sold it.

    His most famous work is his "People of the 20th Century" exhibition which captured and classified his fellow Germans. His intention was to document all German people and to represent them as types of people instead of individuals and once completed his archive had collected up to 40,000 entries.  He classified people by their profession, social class and family relationship, and then divided them into classes such as farmer, skilled tradesman, women, classes and profession, artists, cities and last people (homeless). Sanders took a typological approach and most of his subjects wore work clothes and held the tools of their trade. 

    The exhibit was split into sections and one was dedicated to farmers and old farming men, women and couples in their homes of against a natural backdrop which showed their fundamental role in society. All of the males had female counterparts and families who were also included. 

    Sander is seen as one of the most important German post-war photographers and his style favoured large format cameras with lengthy exposure times in order to focus on detail. His work is described as assisting a self portrait but he made his exhibition specifically for the strict documentation of his view of man. Questions arose over where his work is documentary or portraiture and a conclusion was never come to - it can be seen as documentary as it documents what is happening during specific time periods however the photos are very controlled and precise therefore, reflecting a portrait as it is from Sanders specific point of views and he composes the subjects into certain positions.

   Similar artists to Sanders are Cindy Sherman and Diane Arbus. Both Sanders and Arbus' work reflect the haunt of war - being two world wars for Sanders and the Vietnam war for Arbus. All of the work by these three show class, identity and respective societies ideologies. They highlight the unseen truths of their cultures and the everyday documentary style portraiture and it can be argued that each are trying to document society through their constructive nature of images.

     Below we can see the similarities between work - with August Sander's image on the left and Diane Arbus' on the right.