August
Sander: People of the 20th
Century
by Reiner
Holzemer, Director
First Run / Icarus Films, Brooklyn, NY,
2002
VHS/DVD, 44 mins., col.
Sales Video/DVD: $379.00; rental Video:
$75.00
Distributor’s website: http://www.frif.com.
Reviewed by Roy R. Behrens
Department of Art, University of Northern
Iowa, Cedar Falls Iowa 50614-0362 USA
ballast@netins.net
This excellent film is the first documentary
about German photographer, August Sander
(1876-1964), whose best work was created
in the 1920s during the Weimar Republic,
in advance of the rise of the Nazis. A
portrait photographer who posed his subjects
in their typical home and work environments,
instead of in artificial studio settings,
he is surely one of the most interesting
photographers of the Modern era. His intention,
as he once explained, was to make "a
picture of our times absolutely true to
nature," but he did not hesitate
to stage the way in which his subjects
stood. For example, in "Young Farmers"
(1913), three dapper German farmers, dressed
in suits and sporting canes, pause as
they walk side-by-side on a path in the
position that Sander arranged them. Two
on the right stand together in almost
identical postures, while a third on the
left stands apart, in contrast to the
pattern made by the other two (he also
smokes a cigarette, and his hair is out
of place). This is not unlike a three-phase
joke, when an expectation is set up by
the first two examples, then delightfully
felled by the punch line. Looking more
closely, it is apparent that the hats
and canes of the two figures on the right
are perpendicular, in contrast to those
of the third man, which rhyme but are
set at an angle. Typical of Sander’s
work is his skillfulness at implanting
clever, quiet rhymes, while also recording
what Henri Cartier-Bresson would call
a "decisive moment," albeit
a moment that Sander designed. Using his
own unforgettable photographs, this film
adroitly walks us through the long and
often tortured times of Sander, a brilliant
observer of human behavior, who created
evocative images of citizens of all classes,
ages, and occupations (a cross-section
of Weimar-era society), in a documentary
series he called People of the 20th
Century.
(Reprinted by permission from Ballast
Quarterly Review, Volume 21 Number
1, Autumn 2005.)
