August Sander (German, 1876-1964)

August Sander's epochal study, Citizens of the Twentieth Century, was to be a collective portrait of German society during the Weimar era. It was preceded, in 1929, by Face of Our Time, a book of sixty portraits intended to document the existing social order. Sander's study aimed to capture group similarities and appearances shared by persons of common social, economic, and professional backgrounds. His hierarchical order included the entire social strata and allowed each face to relate its own history. The Nazis later confiscated his books and destroyed his printing plates. Sander's portraits were included in "The Family of Man" exhibition, in 1955.
- Barbara Lenihan

Selected Bibliography
August Sander, Photographs of an Epoch, 1904-1959, an Aperture monograph. Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1980. New York: Aperture, Inc.

In Focus: August Sander. Los Angeles: The J. Paul Getty Trust, 2000.

August Sander, Citizens of the Twentieth Century, Gunther Sander, ed. Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 1986.

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