August Sander: 'In Photography There Are No Unexplained Shadows'
by: Sander, August (Photographer)

Hardcover. London, National Portrait Gallery, 1st, 1997, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 269 pages, hardcover with dust jacket. Photographs throughout, spotless and tight copy. Following his maxim, 'Look, Observe and Think', the German photographer, August Sander, was a craftsman of unerring precision. Despising 'tricks, poses and effects', Sander found inspiration in his determination to create images which were absolutely 'true to nature'. His resulting body of work is a diverse catalogue of portraits which capture people of all ages, from every social setting and calling, which provide, in turn, a rich overview of the personalities who shaped Germany's Weimar Republic.A master of camera portraiture, August Sander began photographing people as a boy around the iron-ore mines of his German hometown. As he grew older, he began to foster strong ideas about the function of photography. These opinions culminated in his 'Confession of Faith in Photography', written in 1927, where he talked of showing the 'truth about our age and its people'. This vision is reflected in the universal quality his images share: the innate ability of the photographer to present more than a portrait to show the characters of his sitters. Published to coincide with the National Portrait Gallery's major exhibition of Sander's photographs, this fascinating book offers a comprehensive overview of Sander's rich body of work. Opening with an introductory essay which gives a thorough analysis of Sander's techniques, the book's range of black and white photographs (over 190 in total) are interspersed with contemporary observations regarding Sander's work (these include the photographer's own words). Spanning more than fifty years, the images shown in August Sander offer a pictorial overview of an era and its people. Dominated by the portraits which make up his huge portfolio, 'People of the 20th Century', this catalogue also includes family photographs and a selection of Sander's haunting landscapes.