Documentation of a Time, Inspiration for a Future by Lasse Flode > @oasismag 's 21st issue

Bauerngeneration, 1912 © Die Photographische Sammlung/SK Stiftung Kultur – August Sander Archiv, Köln; VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn, 2010 - August Sander ©

The German photographer August Sander portrayed a German society of classes and affiliation. It became a unique documentation of its time, and an unique inspiration for the future.

Middle Class Children - August Sander ©

Three young workers lean against a fence on the side of the road in one of many industrial cities in 1920s Germany. Young hands already marked by many years of work, are holding their tools of trade. They look towards the camera standing in front of them, with an emotionless and tired expression on their faces. Three young men with facial expressions like old men. They have grown up fast, perhaps too fast. They are tired. They are dirty. The photographer takes out the plate. Grateful he nods to the three. They have been photographed. Captured in August Sander’s amazing documentation of a society, a nation and a world of its time.

In 1911 August Sander began his lifelong project, that he named ‘Menchen des 20 Jahrhunderts’, ‘People of the 20th Century’. As a backdrop for Sander’s concept was his desire to document the society he lived in, and a conviction that this society was divided into a hierarchy based on professions and affiliation. In its documentation, Sander divided his project into seven different “portfolios of arch-types”: The Farmer, The Skilled Tradesman, The Woman, Classes and Professions, The Artist, The City, and finally The Last People, which consisted amongst others of homeless people, veterans and disabled people. When the war broke out in 1940, Sander had built up a huge archive of about 40,000 negatives. The Nazis were very critical to the collection because
it showed a type of people who didn’t go along with the Aryan stereotype that they wanted to promote. The war was a challenging time for Sander.

Handlanger, 1928 © Photographische Sammlung/SK Stiftung Kultur – August Sander Archiv, Köln

“In many of Sander’s best photographs the face is a mask, but the clothes are a face.” That’s how the American writer and photographer Leo Rubinfien describes Sander’s photographs. The clothes of Sander’s portrayed subjects give a strong contribution in describing and placing people in a social and professional affiliation. Different classes and groups have always had their ‘packaging’, their uniforms in an often stereotyped presentation. This way people has conveyed their belonging, and at the same time their distance from others. Voluntary or involuntary.

“In everyday life the use of clothes (interpreted as) a definition of carrier grade, sexual preferences, economic success and educational achievements.” Today the clothes define Sander’s portraits as a historical documentation of fashion - from the poor workers to the characters of the elite.

The Japanese designer, Yohji Yamamoto references Sander’s portraits as a key source of inspiration, revealing a shared platform of thoughts in a dream of drawing time. If one studies Yamamoto’s shows, the references are clear. Sander’s ability to influence fashion in general, and Yamamoto in particular, are described, though not directly, in Francois Baudot’s Yohji Yamamoto saying that “a  garment that becomes one with the person who wears it, so much a part of him that it is entirely subordinated to the force of his personality.”

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