August Sander

August Sander was a German Photographer mainly active during the period between the two world wars. Sander is mainly noted for his project People of the 20th Century of where he tried to capture a wide part of German society. For this project he created 7 categories of which the photographs would be organised into. These categories are:

1) The Farmer

2) The Skilled Tradesman

3) Woman

4) Classes and Profession

5) The Artist

6) The City

7) The Last People (Homeless, disabled, etc)

My interest in his work stems from my own exploration of portraiture. The current section of the PhD is concerned with, of what Cynthia Freeland calls The Inner Life and is where the viewer perceives more than just a physical representation of a person.

This section is going to be split into 3 sections (well, that's the plan but plans have a habit of changing!) with the first section covering the What and the Who of portraiture. With exploring what people are will involve looking at their roles in society, such as occupation or gender, which is what led me to look at August Sander. With having sections already created, it will be possible to offer a critique of his work whilst discussing What people are and how that fits in with the context of his work.

This will only need to be a short section of about 2,500 words and is designed to offer more of a historical perspective for the rest of the chapter.