Young Soldier, Westerwald

In the 1920s and 1930s, in his studio and around Cologne, Germany, August Sander (1876 – 1964) photographed every type of person he came across, in an attempt to capture the then-changing and diverse German society as a whole, in a project entitled “People of the 20th Century.” This endeavor is largely considered to be one of the most monumental collective portraits created in photographic history. Sander presented each of his subjects as entirely individual within their respective categories: Farmers, Workers, Women, Artists, and Urban Inhabitants as well as Handicapped people and Death Portraits. (A list of these categories is on the right.) Altogether, they present their peculiarities and unrepeatable details as well as how they are representative of a broader ‘type’ of person. Many of these portraits were published in his book Face of Our Time (1929).