Ausgust Sander
If you were to take a portrait of every “type” of person that exists today, how many portraits would you need to take? If you grouped all of the portraits together into a series, what would it look like? How would you define and categorize these “types”? Where would you start?
German photographer August Sander was likely considering these questions in the mid-1920s, when he began his decades-long project People of the Twentieth Century. Though Sander never completed this exceptionally ambitious project, it includes over 600 photographs divided into seven volumes and nearly 50 portfolios. The seven volumes Sander used as his organizing principles were The Farmer, The Skilled Tradesman, The Woman, Classes and Professions, The Artists, The City, and The Last People.
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