August Sander was a German portrait and documentary photographer.  Sander has been described as “the most important German portrait photographer of the early twentieth century. Sander was born in Herdof, 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.

Mood Board

Analysis Of August Sander’s Work

This picture is clearly an environmental portraiture showing a young man carrying some bricks. This is an environmental portraiture because the image gives us an indication about the person being photographed, in this case we know he is a brick layer. We can clearly see that this image is in black and white and split into sections. These sections are as followed, the mans body, his head and then the bricks in which he is carrying. The lighting appears to be up high, illuminating the mans facial features and bricks. This image is also highly contrasted, the man himself is well lit up which contrasts with the very dark background.

There is a large tonal range within this image which is evident where his face is a lot lighter than the rest of his body. There is a significant amount of light directed more towards the bricks and the background is completely black.  This use of light it used to signify the profession in which this man involved himself in. The ISO of the image appears to be quite high, we know this because we can see most of the detail within the mans clothing as well as the bricks. If the ISO was lower this detail would not be so evident. There are various textures within this image for example the rough and creased clothing as well as the textures involved in the bricks.

The concept behind this image can be interpreted in a variety of ways. In my opinion the photographer is trying to portray the idea of child labor by using a male that looks rather young doing a highly difficult and tiring job. However the male is not quite young enough to maybe fit into the category of ‘child’ therefore the photographer could also be referring to the times when people would have to get jobs at a very young age to survive and look after their family.

This image was taken by August Sanders in 1928 and is called ‘The Brick Layer’.  The original name for this image is ‘Handlanger’ which is German for Henchman