Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1999/11/24

[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]

Subject: Re: [Leica] Great environmental portraitists
From: Chandos Michael Brown <cmbrow@mail.wm.edu>
Date: Wed, 24 Nov 1999 14:30:53 -0500

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