August Sander, born 17 November 1876 – 20 April 1964, was a German portrait and documentary photographer. Sander’s first book Face of our time was published in 1929. Sander has been described as “the most important German portrait photographer of the early twentieth century.”

Sander was born in Herdorf, the son of a carpenter working in the mining industry. While working at a local mine, Sander first learned about photography by assisting a photographer who was working for a mining company. With financial support from his uncle, he bought photographic equipment and set up his own darkroom.

He spent his military service (1897–99) as a photographer’s assistant and the next years wandering across Germany. In 1901, he started working for a photo studio in Linz, Austria, eventually becoming a partner (1902), and then its sole proprietor (1904). He left Linz at the end of 1909 and set up a new studio in Cologne.

In 1911, Sander began with the first series of portraits for his work People of the 20th Century.

His work includes landscape, nature, architecture, and street photography, but he is best known for his portraits, as exemplified by his series People of the 20th Century. In this series, he aims to show a cross-section of society during the Wiemar Republic. The series is divided into seven sections: The Farmer, The Skilled Tradesman, Woman, Classes and Professions, The Artists, The City, and The Last People (homeless persons, veterans, etc.). By 1945, Sander’s archive included over 40,000 images.

Image Analysis

I haven chosen this photograph of Sanders to analyse because this photograph is a similar style to the type I want to photograph in my third photoshoot, a model in a open natural landscape. I like this photograph because the backdrop of the fields creates an interesting effect in the way that the fields create a very nateral backdrop, its very simple and allows as much attention on its self as the model, creating a perfect balance. The model is an interesting factor in the photograph, oppose to being stood still, lifeless, he is stood in an intriguing pose, creating a more engaging photograph. The texture of the mud creates a noticeable contrast within its self and the model and fields, dividing the photograph into sections, allowing there to be more to look at within the photograph. In conclusion this photograph is simple but engaging and similar to what I hope to photograph myself for my project.

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INSPIRATION: My inspiration for this shoot was both the combination of William ye, which is evident, And how he uses a large jar and conceptually takes images of people through it in order to extend and manipulate their faces and make a more abstract representation of people and their emotional wellbeing. However, my other inspiration is a much more abstract and once again fine art related artist, who presses faces up against jars, and then paints and manipulates the images themselves in order to create a much more worked into and unique colour and composition.

WHERE NEXT: As this artist, clearly works and edit more into their work, I believe next I should experiment with developing these images further, and possibly even doing so with the intent of creating a small representation and grid of the images similar to above. Due to these shoots being a-lot more dark and brutal to my current theme exploring the essence of beauty, I belive I should connect this shoot with the media and the relation of emotional well being linking to chaos in the news. And how we should ignore this to see the beauty within the world.

POST-MODERNISM AND MODERNISM

Postmodernism was a reaction against modernism. Modernism was generally based on idealism and a utopian vision of human life and society and a belief in progress. It assumed that certain ultimate universal principles or truths such as those formulated by religion or science could be used to understand or explain reality. Modernist artists experimented with form, technique and processes rather than focusing on subjects, believing they could find a way of purely reflecting the modern world. It is generally very simple and non decorative. Modern art rejected tradition so it looked very different to anything anyone had seen before.

While modernism was based on idealism and reason, postmodernism was born of scepticism and a suspicion of reason. It challenged the notion that there are universal certainties or truths. Postmodern art drew on philosophy of the mid to late twentieth century, and advocated that individual experience and interpretation of our experience was more concrete than abstract principles. While the modernists championed clarity and simplicity; postmodernism embraced complex and often contradictory layers of meaning. Cultural identity was a big part of postmodernism, with people realizing that modernism was dominated by straight white men. Within post modern art, it is popular to include quotes or words on their art since it fits with the idea of questioning things. There are no rules about what postmodern art is but there tends to be a lot of contrasting and questioning. The works of post modernism are often abstract and somewhat strange. There is an objective to display that everyone has different reality and there is such thing as human nature instead of nurture.

The modernist approach links to my previous studies of Sugimoto and Monet’s Hay Stacks that focus on mainly the depiction of light and how it shapes the environment. Rather than focusing on subjects these artists use lighting and textures as a way of reflecting the modern world.

Modern Art

Time Period – From 1450 – 1960

Gender Spread – Most of the artists in the modern times were male

Mindset – Go with the ideas in every way

Influence – Political and society pressure

Postmodern Art

Time Period – From 1960 to present

Gender Spread – Mixture of both

Mindset – Question the changes and movinf towards new ones quickly

Influence – Free of any pressures

In the Modern work, whatever the meaning was given by the writer was considered to be the only meaning but in postmodern times, people tend to make their own mind and deduce the idea according to their will. In modern era people tended to enjoy the modernism but in the postmodern era, people are questioning the changes and moving towards new ones quickly. Arts in the modern times was influenced by political and society pressure while the postmodern art is free from all those factors.

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EVALUATION: For this shoot I wanted to re create Williams Ye’s moulding of structure from a fluid object in order to connote themes of fine art. I wanted to use a variation of different colour, in order to create and highlight different tones on the central character himself. When setting up for the shoot I knew how pivotal it was for success that my lighting was able to capture the colour of the fabric without brightening the black background. Not only does this shoot represent a more fine art freedom sense of beauty, but I belive this shoot does too fit with my new themes of self love beauty with the everyday and a certain haiku of femininity and masculinity seen within this performance. There is an artistry of abstraction throughout this shoot. I think-it is fascinating even though how planed this shoot and how it was taken in the studio, there was still a sheer unpredictability to the formation of where the boy would be standing or how the sheet itself would fall. I choose a very quick shutter speed in order to access the clarity of the images that I wanted. My favourite image from this shoot is certainly the use of the gold being thrown and wrapped around the boy. Not only does it shoe a conceptual infraction of our own being and personality being executed as a piece of fine art, but it too is an exploration of identity and the unpredictability of life. The bright gold creates a bright contrast the the dark tonal black background, and the direct eye contact Is too fascinating. From this shoot I will now experiment with one other ye shoot, in which he uses a jar, to conceptualise the behaviours and feeling of someone and what they feel to be trapped inside. As this shoot was planned nearer the beginning of my project their are more links with fine art and the influence from the media, however it will definitely still help achieve the further experimentation to my final narrative project.

For this shoot I wanted to capture the repetition of the view that is shared by everyone all around the world should they come to the edge of their country/island. Thus view being the ocean. I wanted to travel around the island I live on capturing the repetitiveness of the view experienced when i reached the edge of the land. I think through this particular shoot I want to create a sense that, regardless of where we are, we could all go to a large body of water and see the same thing. The fact that we would share the same visual experience regardless of if we did that now, in the past or in the future. Our internal experience stimulated by the view will be more individual and vary from person to person. 

Contact Sheet

Edits

Overall, I am very happy with how this shoot went and even more so with the edits. Through the editing process, which I undertook in Adobe Lightroom I have increased the saturation of the blues and made the images pop by increasing highlights, whites, clarity and contrast. Also, I cropped each image to ensure that the horizon splits the image in half directly through the center like Sugimoto has done within his project. I took this series of images across a whole day which allowed for a change in weather and lighting, altering the aesthetics of the images slightly. This links to my previous study of Sugimoto and Monet’s hay stacks paintings in the way they focus on the depiction of light.