August Sander
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August Sander (November 17, 1876 – April 20, 1964) was a German photographer.
Sander was the son of a carpenter working in the mining industry. While working at a local mine, Sander first learned about photography by assisting a photographer who was working for the mining company. With financial support from his uncle he acquired photographic equipment and set up his own darkroom. He spent his military service (1897 – 1899) as a photographer's assistant, and the next years wandering across Germany. In 1901 he started working for a photo studio in Graz, eventually becoming a partner (1902) and then its sole proprietor (1904). He left Graz in 1910 and set up a new studio in Cologne.
In the early 1920s Sander joined the "Group of Progressive Artists" in Cologne and began plans to document contemporary society in a portrait series. In 1927 Sander and writer Ludwig Marthar traveled through Sardinia for three months, where he took around 500 photographs. However, a planned book detailing his travels was not completed.
Sander's first book Face of our Time was published in 1929. It contains a selection of 60 portraits from his series People of the Twentieth Century. Under the Nazi regime, his work and personal life were greatly constrained. His son Erich, who was a member of the left wing Socialist Workers' Party (SAP), was arrested in 1934 and sentenced to 10 years in prison, where he died in 1944, shortly before the end of his sentence. Sander's book Face of our Time was seized in 1936 and the plates destroyed. During the subsequent decade, Sander's work focused primarily on nature and landscape photography. When World War II broke out he left Cologne and moved to a rural area, allowing him to save most of his negatives. His studio was destroyed in a 1944 bombing raid.
Sander's work includes landscape, nature, architecture, and street photography, but he is most well known for his portraits, as exemplified by his series People of the Twentieth Century. In this series he aims to show a cross-section of society during the Weimar Republic. The series is divided into seven sections: The Farmer, The Skilled Tradesman, The Woman, Classes and Professions, The Artists, The City, and The Last People (homeless persons, veterans, etc.).
