August Sander's Photographic Archive: Fables of the Reconstruction

Abstract

Using August Sander's photographic project, Menschen des 20. Jahrhunderts (People of the Twentieth Century), the author discusses the distinctions to be made between art photographs and documentary photographs. Sander had hoped, through an archive of 1500 to 2000 photographic images of German people, to make a “physiognomic portrait of the nation”, but ultimately his aim was defeated, not only by the destruction of many of his negatives by the Nazis, but also by the scale of the project and changes in historical perspective. Helped by a variety of theorists including Siegfried Kracauer, Roland Barthes and Walter Benjamin, the author analyzes the effect of passing time, with its changing social and psychological ramifications, on the contemporary response to Sander's documentary project. The author concludes that only in a state of “fluid indeterminacy” between art and documentation can a satisfactory interpretation be achieved.