I visited the Getty Center today and saw an exhibit that I thought worthy of a blog post: August Sander: People of the Twentieth Century. It's a collection of about 130 photos taken by this German guy named August Sander back in the 1920s. I chose to go today 'cause the Getty (by the way, one of my favorite museums ever, along with its companion the Getty Villa out in the Pacific Palisades) was screening a 45-or-so-minute documentary about Sander's life. This was followed by a guided tour of the exhibition, something I'd never taken advantage of at the Getty before. The exhibition sounded ingtriguing for a couple reasons. First, I love cool photographs. I've been to other photography exhibitions at the Getty Center, such as the one for Walker Evans they put on a few years back.
And two, I was a student of German for a long time. It was my minor in college. If you've studied a foreign language yourself, then you know that after a while, it becomes about much more than the language. You start learning about the history, culture, and society of the people who speak that language. And, if you're lucky, you get to go there!
And two, I was a student of German for a long time. It was my minor in college. If you've studied a foreign language yourself, then you know that after a while, it becomes about much more than the language. You start learning about the history, culture, and society of the people who speak that language. And, if you're lucky, you get to go there!I picked the perfect Saturday to visit the Getty. It was a beautiful day, if a bit hazy, which you can notice in some of my pics below. As I said above, I love the Getty Center. I hadn't been there in half a year, not since that Temple U. alumni event last December (one of my December blog posts). The museum itself is a work of art, the whole complex and those impeccably manicured gardens. As a bonus, it's perched up on this gargantuan hill in the Brentwood section of West Los Angeles, so that on postcard days like this one, you get views stretching from the downtown skyline in the east to the waters off Santa Monica and Venice Beach to the west.
Okay now about August Sander, here's some of the stuff I gleaned from the documentary, which was in German with English subtitles. August was born in 1876 in this town called Herdorf, 'bout 
an hour's drive east of Cologne which, in turn, is in the extreme west central part of the country, practically abutting the borders of Belgium and Holland. It was a hard knock life for the poor chap at first. He had to drop out of high school and grind it out as a miner in Herdorf's iron ore mines. Just to show you that things happen for a reason, though, it was during the whole mining thing that he met and befriended this one local photographer guy. August found his calling! So he assisted this guy for a bit, and then finally got out of Dodge to pursue photography as a career. I'm not kidding, for the next...twenty!...years, dude basically traveled from town to town in Germany, apprenticing like a madman. Finally he ended up in the Austrian town of Linz, where he ended up as the proprietor of his own establishment. He stayed there for a spell and fine-tuned his craft and scored a few awards. Finally, in 1910 when he was 34, he moved back to the Cologne area. Specifically, he settled in the Cologne suburb of Lindenthal, where he opened his own photography studio. Eventually he scored himself a gal, got married, and started the ol' procreating while his photo biz took off.
an hour's drive east of Cologne which, in turn, is in the extreme west central part of the country, practically abutting the borders of Belgium and Holland. It was a hard knock life for the poor chap at first. He had to drop out of high school and grind it out as a miner in Herdorf's iron ore mines. Just to show you that things happen for a reason, though, it was during the whole mining thing that he met and befriended this one local photographer guy. August found his calling! So he assisted this guy for a bit, and then finally got out of Dodge to pursue photography as a career. I'm not kidding, for the next...twenty!...years, dude basically traveled from town to town in Germany, apprenticing like a madman. Finally he ended up in the Austrian town of Linz, where he ended up as the proprietor of his own establishment. He stayed there for a spell and fine-tuned his craft and scored a few awards. Finally, in 1910 when he was 34, he moved back to the Cologne area. Specifically, he settled in the Cologne suburb of Lindenthal, where he opened his own photography studio. Eventually he scored himself a gal, got married, and started the ol' procreating while his photo biz took off.August earned his living a couple of ways. Yeah, people would show up at his studio to have their portraits taken, but sometimes August would venture out into the countryside and look for people who'd be willing to spare a few ducats for a photo op. This one area that he became a big fan of was the Westerwald (German for the Western Forest). The Westerwald is 
this huge slice of far western Germany that, as I'm sure you can guess, is very agrarian and spread out and chockfull of very interesting peeps. Oh yeah, and there's a huge forest there. While August's photography career was suspended because of World War I, during which time he was forced to do service, the decade of the 1910s really saw him find his own voice as a photographer. Or his own eye, I should say. This happened in a few ways. First, his in-studio and Westerwald clientele more and more insisted on being portrayed as themselves. They requested truthful and objective portraiture as opposed to the more softly focused portraits August indulged in quite a bit during his Austrian stint. Secondly, it was during the late 1910s and early 1920s that August read and became a fan of this book called Decline of the West by Oswald Spengler. As the title pretty much indicates, this wasn't the most uplifting read. According to the documentary, Decline of the West was basically a vehicle for Oswald to theorize that the best civilizations are centered around the soil. That is, the agrarian-based countries are the best. The more urban and city-centered a society gets, the worse off it becomes. Yeah, that'll cheer you up. And finally, by the early 1920s August had begun hanging out with a bunch of folks called the Cologne Progressives. These cats were a bunch of painters who liked to paint their subjects in the context of their environment. The bottom line? By the early 1920s, August realized that what he should do is take photographs of people from every layer of German society. We're talking not just farmers, but peasants, villagers, tradespeople, urban professionals, even the sick and disabled and disadvantaged. By capturing all these archetypes, he could cumulatively create a photographic portrait of the German people.
this huge slice of far western Germany that, as I'm sure you can guess, is very agrarian and spread out and chockfull of very interesting peeps. Oh yeah, and there's a huge forest there. While August's photography career was suspended because of World War I, during which time he was forced to do service, the decade of the 1910s really saw him find his own voice as a photographer. Or his own eye, I should say. This happened in a few ways. First, his in-studio and Westerwald clientele more and more insisted on being portrayed as themselves. They requested truthful and objective portraiture as opposed to the more softly focused portraits August indulged in quite a bit during his Austrian stint. Secondly, it was during the late 1910s and early 1920s that August read and became a fan of this book called Decline of the West by Oswald Spengler. As the title pretty much indicates, this wasn't the most uplifting read. According to the documentary, Decline of the West was basically a vehicle for Oswald to theorize that the best civilizations are centered around the soil. That is, the agrarian-based countries are the best. The more urban and city-centered a society gets, the worse off it becomes. Yeah, that'll cheer you up. And finally, by the early 1920s August had begun hanging out with a bunch of folks called the Cologne Progressives. These cats were a bunch of painters who liked to paint their subjects in the context of their environment. The bottom line? By the early 1920s, August realized that what he should do is take photographs of people from every layer of German society. We're talking not just farmers, but peasants, villagers, tradespeople, urban professionals, even the sick and disabled and disadvantaged. By capturing all these archetypes, he could cumulatively create a photographic portrait of the German people.August described this new monster project as a "cultural work in photographic pictures." He divvied up his photos into seven categories: the farmer, the skilled tradesman, the
woman, classes and professions, the artist, the city, and the "last people" (i.e. sick, handicapped, etc.). By the fall of '27, when he was 51, August put on his first exhibition of this opus and introduced it this way: "Nothing seemed more appropriate to me than to render through photography a picture of our times which is absolutely true to nature.... In order to see truth we must be able to tolerate it, and above all we should pass it down to our fellow men and to posterity, whether it is in our favor or not.... So allow me to be honest and tell the truth about our age and its people." Two years after this exhibition, August published a book called Antlitz der Zeit (Face of the Time), a collection of 60 photos from this Godzilla-sized project. The book did okay with the more liberal Germans, but the conservatives hated it. Especially the.... Can you guess who? The Nazis, of course. They were already making noise in the late twenties, and in 1933 they became "legit," as that was the year Adolf Hitler was "elected" Chancellor. In '36 the Nazis confiscated and destroyed the book's half-tone plates. What rubbed the Nazis the wrong way was how our man August treated equally all facets of German society, whereas the Nazis only wanted to promote those who were tall and blond. And yet they elected a dark-haired stumpy guy to lead them. Hmmm....
woman, classes and professions, the artist, the city, and the "last people" (i.e. sick, handicapped, etc.). By the fall of '27, when he was 51, August put on his first exhibition of this opus and introduced it this way: "Nothing seemed more appropriate to me than to render through photography a picture of our times which is absolutely true to nature.... In order to see truth we must be able to tolerate it, and above all we should pass it down to our fellow men and to posterity, whether it is in our favor or not.... So allow me to be honest and tell the truth about our age and its people." Two years after this exhibition, August published a book called Antlitz der Zeit (Face of the Time), a collection of 60 photos from this Godzilla-sized project. The book did okay with the more liberal Germans, but the conservatives hated it. Especially the.... Can you guess who? The Nazis, of course. They were already making noise in the late twenties, and in 1933 they became "legit," as that was the year Adolf Hitler was "elected" Chancellor. In '36 the Nazis confiscated and destroyed the book's half-tone plates. What rubbed the Nazis the wrong way was how our man August treated equally all facets of German society, whereas the Nazis only wanted to promote those who were tall and blond. And yet they elected a dark-haired stumpy guy to lead them. Hmmm....Speaking of irony, during the tour of the exhibition, our tour guide, a nice gal named Lori, explained to us about how complicated a guy August was. On the one hand, yes, he did want to give equal treatment to all facets of German society. On the other hand, though, he didn't tell a lot of his subjects that their portraits, which they were paying him to take, would end up as part of his
magnum opus. For instance, for the seventh and final part of his project, which he called the "last people," focusing on the sick and disabled and disadvantaged, he took this one photo of a pair of midgets. Mind you, these midgets were well dressed and were no doubt paying August good money to have their portrait taken. Yet August never told them that their pic would be included as part of his "last people" in his Faces of the Twentieth Century project. Is that ethical? Further, while he was very chummy with the Cologne Progressives, August wasn't as progressive as all that. He had very conservative views of a woman's place in society. In the section of his project devoted to women, the vast majority of the women he chose to depict were for the most part Susie Homemaker. I've included one of those photos in this post, called "The Architect's Wife." Yet, on the other hand, August was too liberal for the Nazis. That woman at the very top of this post, on the cover of the exhibition brochure, is called "The Sculptress." Apparently she was a close pal of August's, and he used that photo as part of the "artist" section of his project. I should mention that one of the photos I saw during the tour was of his wife holding their twins soon after they were born. It was a bit grotesque because one of the twins was dead. So August had his wife hold the dead twin and the live twin in each arm and stand there for the camera. I tell ya, you've never seen a woman so spent in your life. Interesting, isn't it? In other words, as the tour guide pointed out, August Sander was a truly unique individual in the way he tried to portray society and pursue his passion project. You could say he was a polemic on two legs. And that's not all that made him unique. August insisted on the old-fashioned big and clunky camera equipment at a time when the handheld variety was becoming mainstream and affordable. His photos were never chosen for any exhibitions or bought by private collectors, but that's probably because, taken out of context, they don't seem like anything special. If you're a marketing guru, you're probably thinking that August was his own worst enemy in terms of making a steady income. The only way he was going to do that was if he actually finished his lifelong passion of portraying the German people. 
These 130 photos in the exhibition, by the way, are just the tip of what he accomplished. Lori told us that the Getty has possession of some 1,200 August Sander photos. He really was a paradox if you think about it. On one side, his photos are very much influenced by tradition and pragmatism, right? Parallel with that, though, he was pursuing a passion project that was extraordinarily ambitious, kinda like Don Quixote and the windmills. Although it was never mentioned during the documentary or the tour, August was sort of Germany's version of our own Dorothea Lange, but on steroids. You've heard of Dorothea, right? You've probably seen her photos in various texts about the Great Depression and didn't even know it. She was the gal from Jersey who took a bunch of photos for the Farm Security Administration that showed the world just what the Great Depression was doing to the American people. There's this one photo called "Migrant Mother," which is about as ubiquitous as any one photo can be. Anywho, it was Dorothea who basically invented the whole idea of documentary photography. I mean, that's essentially what August Sander was doing, only on a much more holistic and ultimately impossible-to-achieve scale. Dude literally wanted to document the German peoples in their entirety. And he did a lot of his work during the Depression. He may not have succeeded per his own standards, but he certainly did a yeoman's job capturing a particular time and place as well as the character of a particular country. It's all the more impressive 'cause World War II really complicated things. He and the wife moved to this small village in the Westerwald called Kuchhausen when the war started. Meanwhile, his Lindenthal studio was completely obliterated during an Allied bombing campaign. August then spent pretty much the rest of his life reprinting and rearranging his negatives, all in his Captain Ahab effort to complete his project. No doubt you're not surprised to know that by the time August moved on to the next life at the age of 87, he still wasn't finished.
magnum opus. For instance, for the seventh and final part of his project, which he called the "last people," focusing on the sick and disabled and disadvantaged, he took this one photo of a pair of midgets. Mind you, these midgets were well dressed and were no doubt paying August good money to have their portrait taken. Yet August never told them that their pic would be included as part of his "last people" in his Faces of the Twentieth Century project. Is that ethical? Further, while he was very chummy with the Cologne Progressives, August wasn't as progressive as all that. He had very conservative views of a woman's place in society. In the section of his project devoted to women, the vast majority of the women he chose to depict were for the most part Susie Homemaker. I've included one of those photos in this post, called "The Architect's Wife." Yet, on the other hand, August was too liberal for the Nazis. That woman at the very top of this post, on the cover of the exhibition brochure, is called "The Sculptress." Apparently she was a close pal of August's, and he used that photo as part of the "artist" section of his project. I should mention that one of the photos I saw during the tour was of his wife holding their twins soon after they were born. It was a bit grotesque because one of the twins was dead. So August had his wife hold the dead twin and the live twin in each arm and stand there for the camera. I tell ya, you've never seen a woman so spent in your life. Interesting, isn't it? In other words, as the tour guide pointed out, August Sander was a truly unique individual in the way he tried to portray society and pursue his passion project. You could say he was a polemic on two legs. And that's not all that made him unique. August insisted on the old-fashioned big and clunky camera equipment at a time when the handheld variety was becoming mainstream and affordable. His photos were never chosen for any exhibitions or bought by private collectors, but that's probably because, taken out of context, they don't seem like anything special. If you're a marketing guru, you're probably thinking that August was his own worst enemy in terms of making a steady income. The only way he was going to do that was if he actually finished his lifelong passion of portraying the German people. 
These 130 photos in the exhibition, by the way, are just the tip of what he accomplished. Lori told us that the Getty has possession of some 1,200 August Sander photos. He really was a paradox if you think about it. On one side, his photos are very much influenced by tradition and pragmatism, right? Parallel with that, though, he was pursuing a passion project that was extraordinarily ambitious, kinda like Don Quixote and the windmills. Although it was never mentioned during the documentary or the tour, August was sort of Germany's version of our own Dorothea Lange, but on steroids. You've heard of Dorothea, right? You've probably seen her photos in various texts about the Great Depression and didn't even know it. She was the gal from Jersey who took a bunch of photos for the Farm Security Administration that showed the world just what the Great Depression was doing to the American people. There's this one photo called "Migrant Mother," which is about as ubiquitous as any one photo can be. Anywho, it was Dorothea who basically invented the whole idea of documentary photography. I mean, that's essentially what August Sander was doing, only on a much more holistic and ultimately impossible-to-achieve scale. Dude literally wanted to document the German peoples in their entirety. And he did a lot of his work during the Depression. He may not have succeeded per his own standards, but he certainly did a yeoman's job capturing a particular time and place as well as the character of a particular country. It's all the more impressive 'cause World War II really complicated things. He and the wife moved to this small village in the Westerwald called Kuchhausen when the war started. Meanwhile, his Lindenthal studio was completely obliterated during an Allied bombing campaign. August then spent pretty much the rest of his life reprinting and rearranging his negatives, all in his Captain Ahab effort to complete his project. No doubt you're not surprised to know that by the time August moved on to the next life at the age of 87, he still wasn't finished.August adhered to the adage "Look, observe, and think." I did an awful lot of that today at the Getty while I took in this man's awesome photos.
Here are some shots of the Getty, including a few during the tram ride up the hillside on the way to the museum.
