Who is August Sander:

August Sander was a German portrait and documentary photographer, he was well known for his work on photographing German Citizens during the 1920’s and is said to be “the most important German portrait photographer of the early twentieth century”.

Career:

Sander is well known for his work on landscape, nature, architecture and street photography. But above all, he is best known for his Portraits. He published an album containing some of his work on portraits and named it “People of the 20th Century”.

People of the 20th Century:

This book was published in 1929 and had 60 environmental portraits within. The physical copies of the photos were destroyed in 1936 by the Germans during World War Two.

MASTER MASON, 1926:

This is one of the photos from the album and I will analyse it.

In this, you see a Brickmason standing next to a pile of bricks looking at the camera. The bricks create a pattern of lines going straight down and across. His white overalls create contrast with the rest of the darker surroundings and is the first thing that you are most likely to get drawn to, you can see that the light shining on him is coming from the right as the left of his body is darker than the rest and he is casting a shadow on the brick pile to the left. It is unclear where he is as there is no background, so it can only be assumed he is inside a factory or working on a house. His face gives neutral vibes, he doesn’t appear happy or sad and instead looks more focused on getting his work done and over with. Behind him you can see some sort of furnace or machine, perhaps used to make the bricks for him to use, along with a bucket at his feet that could be used for the mortar to hold the bricks together.

Altogether, the photo feels very neutral, in both the Man’s emotion and feeling the photo creates. It definitely catches the environmental portraiture side as it shows a man in his working environment.