From August Sander to Michael Somoroff: Absence of subject

    

    

    

 

Reading with great interest the project of Michael Somoroff of reappropriating August Sander's photographs (People of the Twentieth Century) in Eyemazing Nov. 2011, opened my curiosity. I found the project very poetic, nostalgic and pure. Michael Somoroff by getting rid of the characters did not damage the photographs. It brings a new dimensionn and reflection about the ephemeral time on earth of the humanity. How August Sander would have reacted?

Michael Somoroff introduced the idea of re-working on a successful work. August Sander's portfolio of pictures are reknown as a sociological study of men from different layers of the German society at the beginning of the twentieth century. Michael Somoroff emphasized the quietness of the photographs. The men disappear but the scene remains... It is a very strong statement. It is about life, humanity, diversity, history...

What could we add? Opposition: Analog versus digital, presence versus absence, man versus object, loneliness versus multitude... Colour as the Japanese hand-colourised photographs ? Other characters to the scene in the style of fantasy  postcards? May I play with the characters and arrange them in another set-up? 

Books

August Sander: 

Citizens of the twentieth century edited by Gunther Sander (1980)              

Photographs of an epoch                                                        

'In photography there are no unexplained shadows!'(NPG 1997)