Gallery Berinson has just opened its new gallery space in Berlin Charlottenburg with 70 photographs by August Sander (1876-1964).
The exhibited picture series was collected by August Sander and his son Gunther. The selections were made in his laboratory in Cologne in 1962 – where they were also personally examined and accepted by August Sander.
Sander’s aim was to show a realistic portrayal of his characters as well as to create a social documentation of his time. This comprehensive photographic portrait collection succeeds in presenting a unique and multifaceted social portrait of the early 20th century and underlining the relationship between man and its community.
By portraying various societal strata, Sander saw a way of showing and classifying typical physiognomies and body languages of different professional and social groups, gender and generations as well as individual appearances. Thus, Sander took a look at the large-town craftsman, the modern industrialist, the peasant , the bourgeoisie with its artists and different figures, and also the proletariat.
Sander pursued a clear systematic approach in his classification process, trying to gather as much information of various groups, and documenting his full body portraits in their natural , social, and professional environment. Hereby, recognizing a structure, he tried to explore his supposed idea and theory of the possibility of classifying people. It was an attempt to create an historical image of his time, a human and social panorama in an epoch full of deep upheavals, opposites and tensions.
It was Sander’s vision that the external appearance of a human being with his typical gestures, mimicry, pose and clothing was to be imaged and captured, and was thereby to a certain degree truly identifiable. The result was a German “novel”, a phenomenon and a society inventory as it was never created before.
August Sander
January 27 to April 30, 2017
Schlüterstraße 28
10629 Berlin
Germany
