Product Details
Paperback
144 pages
J Paul Getty Museum Pubns
Published 2000
From Booklist
Sander (1876-1964) is one of the gods of photography, a good independent photographer who late in his career conceived a 500-photograph gallery of "Citizens of the Twentieth Century" within the western German society centered in Cologne. He portrayed his subjects at bust or greater length, always looking into the lens, attired in their normal clothes (one exception: the famous picture of three young farmers in their Sunday best), and with only things they usually used as props. His sympathy for them appears complete. There is no condescension in his portraits of laborers and traveling circus performers, no bathos in those of dwarves and blind young girls, and no satire in images of an SS officer and ordinary Nazis. He never completed his great work: the Nazis didn't like it. Besides comments about each reproduction, the book has a biographical introduction and a colloquy on Sander among eight photographic historians, editors, and curators. Ray Olson
Copyright ¬ American Library Association. All rights reserved
Book Description
The long life of German photographer August Sander (1876-1964) spanned one of the most turbulent eras in his country's history. The Great War of 1914-1918, the Weimar Republic, the reign of National Socialism, and the horrors of World War II all left an indelible imprint on both the man and his work. Sander, a conventional studio portraitist who transformed himself into an avant-gardist, exemplified the complex and sometimes contradictory nature of his time. He was at once innovative and deeply wedded to the past, blending a progressive vision with a traditional view of society and his craft.
The approximately fifty plates featured in In Focus: August Sander are some of the most striking from the Getty Museum's more than twelve hundred pictures by the artist. They include images of rural dwellers such as those found in Young Farmers and Farm Girls, and other portraits including Wife of the Cologne Painter Peter Abelen, Parliamentarianand the poignant Blind Children, Duren. A chronological overview of Sander's life provides a factual framework for this discussion. |
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