Photographic typologies are believed to have originated from August Sander’s series of portraits ‘Face of our Time’.
August Sander was a German portrait and documentary photographer. August Sander photo series, People of the Twentieth Century is a great example of Environmental Portraiture. Sander has been described as “the most important German portrait photographer of the early twentieth century.” (cited: Wikipedia [Michael Collins, Record Pictures (Thomas Telford Publishing, 2004), p. 1842] )
He used a large-format camera and long-exposure times. He created hundreds of portraits for a typology of German society during both the World Wars. Many of his photographs are environmental portraits. – sourced from artsy.net “He established a photography studio, first in Austria, then in Cologne, where he settled in 1910 and made photographs of local peasants.” – icp.org. This is what inspired his life’s work.
His work includes landscape, nature, architecture, and street photography, however, he is known best for his portraits
Young Farmers 1914, printed 1996 
Pastrycook 1928, printed 1999 
Bricklayer 1928, printed 1990
Sander was born in Herdorf, he was the son of a carpenter working in the mining industry. He was working at a local mine when he first learned about photography by assisting a photographer who was working for a mining company. He acquired some financial support from his uncle, with which he bought photographic equipment and set up his own darkroom.
The image of the Pastry cook is a photograph from Sander’s photo series ‘People of the Twentieth Century’. The image depicts a particular type of person, in this case, Sander shows a skilled tradesman working in his kitchen. The round shape of the bowl mirrors the shape of the Cook’s body, this suggests that the subject of the photograph is the type of person to be really involved in their work, almost as if they have become it themselves. By using a sharp focus on the foreground, the subject becomes the priority along with his body language became this is the main focus of the image, the soft focus in the background allows this to happen. Sander has positioned the subject in order to have the most likely natural light reflecting on the side of the face, bowl and shoes. He takes black and white photographs, therefore tone is a big focus when taking the photos. By using a dark background this allows the lighter foreground to stand out more effectively. This also reiterates the subject being the main focus in the photograph and the suggestion that he is a part of his work.