Images: Photography
Young Farmers
August Sander 1914 The J. Paul Getty Museum This portrait by August Sander is of three young farmers all dressed up in suits with walking canes strolling along the countryside, most likely on their own farms. This photo shows the changing fashions of the time where young men liked to dress up and look nice. Although this photo gives a lot of information and narrative detail about these three men, it still remains ambiguous and open to interpretation. How are these three men connected to each other and to the photographer? Although Sander gives us a head on view of a moment suspended in time, he still leaves much to the viewer. |
Hod-Carrier
August Sander 1928 Alan Koppel Gallery Hod-Carrier by August Sander is yet another role systematically portrayed in Sander’s quest to create a photographic portrait of the German People. In this photo stands squarely and head on a young workman, carrying bricks on his shoulders to by laid down. His photos give a very honest air to his subjects, the viewer can see the strong and hard exterior that this man is giving off while at the same time giving off an inner satisfied glow. This photo is just another great example of Sander’s recording of a “physiognomic image of an age.”(1) (1)Doblin and Lange, August Sander 1876-1964, p105. |
Unemployed Man
August Sander 1928 The J. Paul Getty Museum In this photo, Unemployed Man, August Sander gives a view as to what life is like for the lowest of classes in modern industrial Germany. The picture features a lone man, shabbily dressed, standing on a street corner of a German city. Over 6 million people were unemployed in Germany by the year 1932 because of the Wall Street Crash in October 1929(1). Sander captured the beginning of the calamity in his quest to show Germany’s transformation from an agrarian society into an unstable center of international capitalism. (1)Claudia Bohn-Spector, In Focus August Sander, p58. |
Glasses
Albert Renger-Patzsch 1927 National Gallery of Australia This photo of four glasses of different shapes and sizes is a perfect example of Renger-Patzsch’s sharply focused style of photographing mass-produced objects. Renger-Patzsch finds the beauty in common placed and banal subjects like in this photo where he makes everyday drinking glasses look so unique and breathtaking. He uses the shadows of the glasses and the reflections of the glasses upon each other to create a magnificent composition that captivates the viewer. Renger-Patzsch once praised photography for its ability to achieve “the subtlety of shading from the highest point of light to the deepest shadow,” which is exactly what is seen in Glasses.(1) (1)Wilde and Weski, Albert Renger-Patzsch, Photographer of Objectivity, p165. |
Shoe Lasts at the Fagus Works
Albert Renger-Patzsch 1926 Bauhaus Museum of Design Shoe Lasts at the Fagus Works is a perfect example of Renger-Patzsch awareness of the duplicating nature of a medium. In this photo he is “reproduc(ing) the dynamism of modern technology,” by alluding to the rising factory system in Germany(1). These shoes were mass produced in a factory which could have only been possible beginning in the nineteenth century. So he is at the same time showing how far man has come and yet how repetivtive man-made objects can be. It is a poetic work that speaks to his own contemporary times. (1)Kuspit and Naef, Albert Renger-Patzsch, Joy Before The Object, p34. |
Adder’s Head
Albert Renger-Patzsch 1925 The Metropolitan Museum of Art Hans Namuth, an American photographer a generation younger than Renger-Patzsch, describes how Renger-Patzsch emphasizes the details of things until they seem to “vibrate with life, some to a disturbing degree.” This vitality is exactly what encompasses Renger-Patzsch’s photograph of an Adder’s Head. His close up view of the snake’s head at once makes the viewer look differently at the beauty in the repetitive nature of the snake’s scales. It almost appears as a scientific illustration because of the intense clarity of the photo, but this is exactly what defines Renger-Patzsch’s style. |