A Review of the exhibition August Sander: Objective Romantic
August Sander (1876-1964) was one of the greatest photographers in the last century.He is famous for his vast collective portrait of the German people, Besides, he also created many excellent photos of landscapes and architectures.(Sander, 2008) His photograph style is quite straight, unmanipulated and relatively objective.His artistic sensibility originates from romanticism trend in the late 19th century and the early 20th century (Halley, 1978).
The exhibition August Sander: Objective Romantic is organized by Mount Saint Vincent University Art Gallery in collaboration with the National Gallery of Canada.(Steeves, 2013) It is a short term photography exhibition of August Sander from 7th September 2013 to 20th October 2013.There are thirty-two photographs in the exhibition with thirty-one come from the collection of the National Gallery of Canada.(Steeves, 2013) As a guest curator and writer, George Steeves made a selection of the exhibits and wrote the introduction texts.All photographs in the exhibition are gelatin silver prints.Where dates are shown separated by a virgule, the first is the date of the negative and the second the date of the print.Dimensions in centimeters appear height before width.
From my point of view, the curatorial theme Objective Romantic perfectly depicts Sander’s artistic style and accomplishments.In addition, this theme is also conveyed through all the exhibits.According to curator Steeves’ analysis (2013), the details of Sander’s portraits record the social stratifications of his era, yet neither his broadly inclusive “categories” nor the dignified treatment of his sitters respects the
prevailing distinctions between claes and races, thus lies the paradox of the title Objective Romantic.
According to the introductive texts, Sander used the large format cameras to complete all of these photographs.Therefore the faces and clothing materials in these photographs very clear, the perspectives are also quite precise.Most of the portraits are fully body shots or cropped shots.(Steeves, 2013) Besides, he usually put the objects in the proper backgrounds, and wisely used the depth of field to reduce the disturbance of the backgrounds.Most people in his photographs have no facial expreions, which bring his works a kind of sentimental atmosphere as well as the depth of emotions.However, with the faster lens and films, he could capture the subtler expreions of people.As for the lighting, most of these works were took in the natural lights in cloudy days.Moreover, most eyes in his photographs are justing looking at the lens directly, which is the acquiescent way of portrait photography.Among all these photographs in the exhibition, some of them were selected from Sander’s most well-known project People of the 20th Century.He had conducted this project for over 30 years.During that period of time, he photographed all kinds of German people, from farmers, manual workers to businemen even Nazi officials, which fully present his objective position and romantic feeling.In his works like Captain of the Reserve, Military Contrast and Master Tailor, even the purest German people are not perfect sculptures.No matter Germans, Jews or people from other races, all of them look like real people.As a result, his works nearly subverted the
Nazi’s The Aryan superiority ethnic theory, and were banned to be published and displayed during the 1930s.
Sander used as tools his personality, instincts, and intellect to achieve his objectives of simple, natural portraits that show the subjects in an environment corresponding to their own individuality, portraits that claim the right to be evaluated as works of art (Sander, 2008).From his portrait photographs, I could see through the inner minds of those objects.
All the works in this exhibition could be read as a mini-encyclopedia of Germany between the two world wars.It is obvious that this encyclopedia is humanistic.Every person in front of his lens seems to narrative their own stories, and indeed they tell us much information.He put people before the politics and ideology and clarified various faces in his works.All in all, August Sander’s excellent works tell people that no matter countries or nations, politics or military fights, behind them there are many living persons.There was no country at the very beginning, it is people’s unity that makes a country meaningful.
References:
Baker, G.(1996).Photography between narrativity and stasis: August Sander, degeneration, and the decay of the portrait.October, 76, 73-113.
Clarke, G.(1992).Public faces, private lives: August Sander and the social typology of the portrait photograph.The Portrait in Photography, 71-93.
Halley, A.(1978).August Sander.The Maachusetts Review, 19(4), 663-673.
Sander, A.(2008).August Sander: People of the Twentieth Century.Wiley.3-15.
Steeves, G.(2013).August Sander: Objective Romantic.Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication.7-46.
