Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1999/11/24
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]Mike, I couldn't agree with you more. When I first saw the photos in -Sander Menschen- back in the early 70s, I was staggered. I still remember with extraordinary clarity one of his portraits of a bricklayer. Astonishing stuff. And humbling. Chandos >Martin, >August Sander, whose epic project "The Face of Germany" is certainly the >most ambitious and best "environmental portrait" project ever attempted >or realized. There is really no book that adequately shows the truly >marvelous print quality he got (I've had the privilege of seeing >hundreds of original prints), but his portraits are astonishing and >astonishingly consistent--worth returning to again and again. Taken as a >whole, his work was truly one of the great masterpieces of photography, >even if his ambition was, in the end, impossible to achieve. > >There is a good new (1999) book put out by Taschen, but the classic, and >the book that fairly represents the sweep of his vision, is of course >the massive _August Sander: Citizens of the Twentieth Century: Portrait >Photographs, 1892-1952_ by Gunther Sander (Editor), Ulrich Keller >(Editor), Linda Keller (Translator), MIT Press, 1986. Unfortunately the >reproduction is only adequate (I haven't seen the new book). A relative >bargain at $75 and a book that deserves consideration for a place in >even the most, um, "concentrated" library of great photography. > >He did not, of course, use a Leica, although if he as much as owned one >in his dotage--or handled one in a store--I'm sure he can be claimed as >a "great Leica photographer" by somebody. <gg> > >--Mike Chandos Michael Brown Assoc. Prof., History and American Studies College of William and Mary http://www.wm.edu/CAS/ASP/faculty/brown