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palimpsests & other things
17 janvier 2012

Auguste Sander 1876-1964

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Voir, observer, penser: la profession de foi d'un photographe

Auguste Sander took 40 000 photograph whose 30 000 have disappeared following a bombing of Koln, during WWII. His photographs have perfect qualities such as the study of the reality, the authenticity of the model and a conceptually organised photographic thought. August Sander had an unceasing interest for the visible shapes of human presence. Sander's photography serves the reality and transmits a true image of his time. August Sander imposed an uncompromising fidelity to the nature on himself: "seeing things as they are, not as they should or could be."

After Karl Blossfeld (1865-1932) and his botanical plates, after Albert Renger-Patsch (1897-1966) and his objective documentaries, Auguste Sander ushered in an artistic accuracy. These three photographers had a part in changing the conceptual approach of the artistic plates of the end of the nineteeth century and the beginning of the twentieth. From 1920, new ideas on representation emerged. The authenticity of the photograph served the analysis and the registration of the reality. After WWI, artists and intellectuals focused on a new way of expression. They took conscious of the reality and criticized the image that the society was giving of itself. 

In Koln, where August Sander settled his family, were established a movement called "the progressists of Koln". Heinrich Herle and Franz Wilhelm Seiwert tried to combine constructivism and objectivity, geometry and object, generl and particular, avant-garde concepts and political commitment.

"Auguste Sander's plates rid the painting of the duty to create real images of that time. These photographs will be transmitted to the future as documentaries. This implies that the painting would have to fulfil the other duty of the arts: being, in his time, the utopic concept of the world." Franz Wilhelm, 1930

Auguste Sander has made a documentary and a social sketch of his time without idealizing the people. He also avoided to give a simplistic image which could be benificial to an ideology. He worked on range of society he was familiar with. Amongst his customers, he chose those who where the most suitable for his work. His fundamental research was to establish a socio-historical documentary as exhaustive as possible on his time. He was planning a survey on different social categories: 46 files of twelve plates each, divided in seven sections.

"Humans whom I knew from my youth fitted, because of their link to the nature, for carrying out my idea of an original material". The closest section to the basic material is formed by the different generation of peasants, then come the craftsmen and workers, then the women and the other social groups until the artists and pinhabitants of tbig cities, at last the fringe people.

According to Auguste Sander: "his work follows the path from the man whose activity is linked to the earth, pursues his way towards the peak of the culture in its most delicate expression before coming down to the weak".

Auguste Sander's portraits are stiff as a poker. Sander neutralizes the individual characteristics of each individual. Sander's objectivity was welcomed with enthusiasm in 1929, but was confronted to a radical opposition seven years later. His work was not meeting the nazi ideology. Th plates of his book "Antlitz der Zeit" (Faces of our time) were seized and destroyed by the nazis. From that time, Sander's work got more and more difficult. His son was denounced and put in jail where he died. Sander worked underground to pursue his project.

August Sander was a master in sociology without word. His aim was to tell the truth about men.

 

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