What do we see when we look at a portrait? An individual's features? An insight into character? A fleeting emotion? An artist's unwitting self-portrait? Perhaps all of these things and more, but for August Sander (1876-1964)-master photographer who flourished in Germany's Weimar Republic-none of this mattered so much as the ability to record society.
And, beginning in 1910, he took to the task with an energy and an encyclopedic turn of mind that remain unrivaled to this day. He called the project Menschen des zwanzigsten Jahrhunderts (People of the Twentieth Century) and, in 1929, published his preliminary collection in a book entitled Antlitz der Zeit (Face of Our Time).
An exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, on view from May 25 to September 24, surveys much of his remarkable oeuvre.
That Sander produced most of his images in the 1920s, with Germany collapsing all around him, gives the work special poignancy.
Sander's inclusion of Jews, gypsies, revolutionaries, and the downtrodden brought trouble with the Nazis who, soon after coming to power, banned the book (1936) and destroyed many of the original plates. Later they killed several of Sander's subjects. Even without the sinister aftermath, however, the photographs stand out for their beauty and strength.
Sander himself saw his work as an intersection between the universal and the particular: the individual is of interest mainly as a member of a larger group. This belief led him to divide his project into seven segments (farmer, skilled tradesman, woman, classes and professions, artist, city, and "last people," such as the blind and crippled). We meet shepherds and teachers and boxers, not Herr Schmidt or Fräulein Müller, because names are of passing interest only. What matters is the relationship of the individual to society, of the part to the whole. "Sander has succeeded in writing sociology," Alfred Döblin observed in his 1929 introduction to Antlitz der Zeit, "not by writing, but by producing photographs-photographs of faces and not mere costumes."
Today it is unlikely that a single man or woman (of the genus "photographer" or otherwise) would attempt anything so all-embracing. The very notion of completeness has become suspicious and the assumptions underlying Sander's work should not go unquestioned. How complete, for instance, is a system which reduces everything to a social role, especially since these roles often elude visual characterization? Without their identifying labels, how many of us would be able to distinguish the locksmith from the composer or the Bohemian from the theater critic?
Or again, can the idea that one man embodies the "pastrycook" get beyond a static reading of society? Does a chef only dream of cream puffs? The system may be encyclopedic, but it also reduces its subjects to shadows of their larger selves.
The photos themselves are beautifully executed. Silver gelatin prints of medium format, they portray their subjects with great economy: standing or sitting, in frontal or three-quarter views, and usually looking directly at the camera against a neutral backdrop.
O ancora, l'idea che un uomo incarni un pasticciere può diventare una lettura statica della società? Uno chef sogna soltanto i suoi bignèes di crema? Il sistema può essere enciclopedico ma ugualmente riduce i suoi soggetti ad ombre più grandi di loro.
Sander's Germans stare out at eternity, scowling, reflecting, exuding prosperity, bearing silent pain, or impressing us with an inner dignity, but they rarely smile. When they do, the smile seems strained or unnatural, like that of the Grammar-school girl (no. 39 in his book), whose youthful face sends us a smile of touching vulnerability.
Her fur-lined coat, elegant leather glove, and string of pearls underscore her comfortable position in society, but the legs awkwardly turning inward-and the unhappy smile-hint how fragile that comfort is. An eloquent but understated body language extends to the whole series. Rarely do we find an undulating curve, or limbs extending into space, or a hint of exuberance, because the space and the people who inhabit it are tight, intense, and claustrophobic.
Deeply humanist in its refusal to portray anything but people, but also anti-humanist in draining people of their individuality, Sander's work is one of the great realizations of twentieth-century photography. Sander may have wished to obscure the emotional life of his subjects, but in the awkward poses, tentative expressions, and tight focus, the emotional life manages to seep through. More than his bookish collection of types this inner life is, I think, why his images continue to move us today.
