Home // March.21.2018 // Catherine Dossett

Shedding the Mask of Social Convention:

Images of Children in August Sander's People of the Twentieth Century

In the first half of the twentieth century, photographer August Sander set out on a long-term project that would define his career. Menschen des 20. Jahrhunderts, or People of the Twentieth Century, comprises portraits of groups and individuals in Germany. While the ultimately unfinished project may be considered a window into this rapidly changing period of German history—a time that encompasses both world wars and the rise and fall of the Weimar Republic—it also sheds light on human nature. The faces of his sitters, their clothes and their postures, and their relationships with their environments all point to social structures that shaped the lives of artists and farmers, upper- and lower-class men and women alike. Yet there is something about his portraits of children that picks apart and even subverts the established social types that mark Sander's adults. In Sander's portraits, children, uninhibited by social norms, present the most intimate glimpses into human nature.

Sander's portraits of both adults and children are marked by an intensity that demands respect from the viewer. The photographer deals in deep tones and expressive eyes, in carefully constructed compositions, in figures isolated in settings that reflect their ways of life. His wry humor does not escape his lens, despite the formulaic approach into which his works lapse. And formulaic though his portraits may appear, his figures are never without dignity and never without individualism. Nonetheless, no source will deny the social and occupational types Sander uses to describe his subjects; after all, People of the Twentieth Century is divided into groups of classes, occupations, and gender, with further subdivisions within each group. (Truly egalitarian, he would even go on to immortalize both “Persecuted Jews” and “National Socialists” alike; cf. Keller, p.63.) Organized into a single body of work, Sander's portraits invite the viewer to uncover a common thread among the sitters. On the surface, that thread is scientific; in his reflections on photography, he cites physiognomy as an important defining factor. Yet Sander's body of work cannot be called purely scientific; the personal and at times sweet nature of his photographs separates it from traditional research or documentary photography, as Walter Benjamin points out (and as quoted by Catherine Gander in her book on "the poetics of connection", "The Photo-text", Muriel Rukeyser and Documentary).

Following this scientific approach, Sander preferred a serial format for his portraits. Isolated, his images would have less impact. Nonetheless, isolation is necessary to study his photographs of children. Not only is it the best method to realize the personalities of the sitters, but it also allows for a better understanding of the themes that pertain to this category of people as well as overarching themes that apply to the portfolio as a whole. Moreover, the common compositional format of his photographs is a strategy relating to the theme of tension. His portraits are the meeting places of the “truth” that he sought through his photography and the “objectivity” that emanates from the formal approach in his “exact photography,” according to art historian George Baker, writing in the magazine October (page 80). The formulaic compositions provide a common ground by which a narrative may be told, not only serially as Sander preferred but individually. And like scientific research, deviations may be found through the examination of singles cases, but overall, there remain certain trends. In other words, then, in his photographs, Sander's overarching theories on photography as well as anecdotes about the lives of the sitters are visible and significant in their own right. Though Sander's younger sitters tend to stray from his theories on social types, these scenes are not captured by chance. To assume that Sander produced snapshots of children without realizing their expressions or their reactions would be to underestimate the care that the photographer placed in his portraits. In this way Sander was an artist, denying that his practice meant simply “pushing a button” but instead “work[ing] with forethought”, to quote language used in a 1980 exhibition monograph published by Aperture.

Despite his emphasis on science and 'straight photography', he was invested in creating artful compositions. Moreover, to assume that his egalitarian approach did not extend towards children would be incorrect. Said to have had a natural touch with young people, he was a loving father dedicated to his own children as well as those in the neighborhood. His respect for them is unmistakable, and his portraits treat them with as much importance as his adult sitters. Indeed, for Sander, they are young men and women with charm and personality rather than oblivious youths, and it is likely that for this reason he included portraits in which they stand alone as the sole subjects in the image. Nonetheless, the images that include children alongside their parents provide the some of the most interesting dynamics among Sander's sitters, particularly when it comes to their adherence to conventional standards.


Figure 1. “Widower with Sons” (return)	Figure 2. “The Wife of Peter Abelen, with her Daughter” (return)	Figure 3. “Wife of the Cologne Painter Peter Abelen” (return)	Figure 4. “Country Girl” (return)

An early photograph by Sander, “Widower with Sons” (Figure 1 ), lends insight into children's places in a world of societal convention. Dating around 1906 or 1907, it is markedly different from other images of families in People of the Twentieth Century. The main distinction, of course, is that one member of the family is missing: the wife of the widower and mother of the two boys. Her absence is felt: the widower gazes away from the camera pensively, and his two sons wear bleak expressions. Here, Sander's emphasis on physiognomy is best made evident. “We can read in [someone's] face whether he is happy or troubled,” the photographer once said in a lecture in 1931, “for life unavoidably leaves it trace there” (quoting once more from the Aperture monograph).

In “On Photography,” quoted by Claudia Bohn-Spector in her introspection on Sander in the Getty Museum's In Focus series, Susan Sontag characterizes Sander's larger project as follows: “He assumed, correctly, that the camera cannot help but reveal faces as social masks. … All his subjects are representative, of a given social reality—their own.” (page 54) The viewer would do well to keep this description in mind, in order to spot that social mask in the group portrait. Well-dressed, the family stands in a nicely furnished parlor, decorated with a painting, a side table with a ceramic inset, and a detailed Persian rug. The father takes on the role of the widower, as he is designated in the title, and he stares into the distance as one pondering the loss of his wife. Outwardly, he presents himself in a way that is commendable, a way that garners sentiment from the viewer. His grief is heartfelt, but not crippling. His hands, however, betray the depths of his sadness. He draws his sons close. The fingers of his right hand press into the collar of his taller son, as if urging the boy to stand up straight, to put on that social mask Susan Sontag references. And he can, to a degree, holding himself tall and staring into the camera. But his brother, by contrast, slumps in to this father's arm, exhausted. The only source of energy in the little boy lies in his hands, one clutching the leg of his breeches and the other clenched by his side, blurred in its restlessness. Behind him, a long, deep shadow stretches off-frame, seeming to emphasize the boy's depression.

In “Widower with Sons,” we can see the conflict Sander illustrates between the personal self and the outward self. It is interesting that Sander should place such prominence on the concept of social types when images like the one mentioned above points towards personal narratives within the sitters. However, the photographer means to depict these “two truths,” John Szarkowski says in Looking at Photographs, quoted again by Claudia Bohn-Spector, “simultaneously and in delicate tension: the social abstraction of occupation and the individual soul who serves it.” (page 50) It is not so much that these two are mutually exclusive, but that one may inform the other, or vice versa. For many, a persona based on occupation comprises that outward self that is exaggerated and projected to others in daily life, and the camera, like an eye, cannot help but capture it. Nonetheless, the “individual soul” shines through, not only in the sitter's anxiety about social projection, but in the tiny details that may be teased out by a careful reading of the photograph. In “Widower with Sons,” that tension manifests in the hands of the smaller boy, clutching at his pants but unable to muster the strength to emulate his father as his brother can.

The same sort of tension between social types and individuality is present in Sander's photo of “The Wife of the Painter Peter Abelen, with her Daughter” (Figure 2 ). The image, dating some twenty years after “Widower with Sons,” around 1927 or 1928, includes just enough imagery to supplement the title. The figures of the mother and daughter certainly look their roles—Helene Abelen glares protectively at the camera while her daughter Josepha sits with a calm and curious expression—and the paintings hanging on the wall in the background reflect the occupation of her husband. We see here (as in many of the Sander's photographs) his imposing of gender norms on women.

Indeed, despite the increase in employment among women in the Weimar Republic as well as the progressive roles they would take on in the 1920s and '30s, the photographer holds fast to the notion of the woman's place in the home. (They were in themselves a social type for the photographer, hence the portfolio dedicated to “The Women.”) Regardless of Sander's preference of tradition in his works, his sitters, Helene Abelen in particular, have other ideas. For reference, she is the same woman posing in a man's shirt and tie in Sander's 1926 photograph “Wife of the Cologne Painter Peter Abelen” (Figure 3 ). While she does not smoke a cigarette in her portrait with Josepha—a provocative action for a woman—Abelen wears the same unblinking gaze, the same cropped hair, and similarly masculine clothing. It is perhaps because of her mother's personal disregard for social convention that Josepha adopts a cool look as she surveys the camera. Unfazed, she finds no reason to be ashamed of her bare legs or feet, her short and frizzy hair, or the fact that she and her mother are sitting on the carpet. There is no social veil for either figure besides the one which Sander imposes on them by way of his mother-daughter, modern-day Madonna-and-Child composition. Combined with the second image of Abelen, we begin to realize the flaws in Sander's pseudo-scientific structure, and we see instead portraiture for what it is: “all settings are sets, all objects are props, all clothes are costumes, and all faces are masks,” according to Robert Silberman of the University of Minnesota. (Page 317) Yet despite the “theatrical” quality Silberman argues, there are those sitters that do not realize that they are on stage. Josepha and the other children in Sander's portraits introduce a certain realness because they are not as concerned about projecting an identity for the camera.

Sander's “Country Girl” (Figure 4 ) was taken in 1913, during the earlier years of the project. Unlike the previous two images, the sitter is alone. She is a young girl, not yet a teenager, and, centrally placed, she stares directly at the viewer. Behind her, a path through the woods is just visible, but she and the photographer have strayed into the grass for her portrait. The staging of the image is blatant, and while it is not unusual for photographers even today to manipulate their subjects for maximum effect, the theatricality of the scene emits a feeling of awkwardness. This clumsiness is related to the sitter, who, despite posing according to the photographer's directions, refuses to appear natural. Following Sander's typical approach to the portraits in his portfolio, the sitter should occupy a type, and by all rights Sander has composed a scene of the everyday life of a country girl. This anonymous girl, however, does not feel comfortable assuming her role. Mouth parted slightly, her expression is one of wryness or perhaps exasperation. The leafy branch that she grips between her fingers is a foreign object against her clean, striped dress, and her other arm hangs limply by her side. She is everything of a preteen child, stockings bunched under her knees and hair plaited with large white ribbons. Caught between childhood and adulthood, the young girl is a clumsy representation of both. Her shiny leather shoes and clean dress fail to distract the eye from her short, child-length skirt, blowing in the wind to reveal traces of a scalloped petticoat. What results is a portrait in which the sitter stands as out-of-place as the branch she holds to her chest, and, indeed, as out-of-place as a true girl from the countryside painted as a pastoral stereotype.

Here, in a girl who resists the passage into adulthood, are societal conventions most visible. Full-grown men and women surround her in Sander's portfolio, individuals who feel comfortable in their roles in early twentieth-century Germany. But “Country Girl” is a crack in the apparent confidence of these men and women. Ribbons and leafy branch reflect those traditional gender roles Sander often imposed on the women he photographed, yet the preteen girl's loose stockings and flyaway hairs seem to point otherwise. In spite of her imperfect appearance, she makes eye contact with the camera, uncomfortable with the photographer's—and, by extension, the viewer's—gaze, yet assured in herself and in her identity.

Although People of the Twentieth Century seems to encourage interpretations of the individuals depicted based solely on social types, visual analysis of August Sander's photographs breaks through superficial readings to make way for a deeper narrative. His images of children in particular reveal a fascinating tension between social convention and individuality. Alone or in groups, with other children or flanked by authority figures, children react to Sander's camera in ways that his adult sitters would not dare. They grin, they pose awkwardly, they gaze with curious expressions at the instrument in the photographer's hands. Playing off the photographer's ideas of physiognomy, their faces provide the strongest contrasts with their adult counterparts, expressing without fear of social repercussion their curiosity, their grief, and even their discomfort. And these raw, human expressions are made all the more visible as they stand beside those adults. Children represent the inner self in tension with social convention. As they step tentatively into the realm of adulthood, the children in Sander's works—presented, as with his other subjects, with an egalitarian touch—grapple with social norms, like the preteen sitter in “Country Girl” or the two boys in “Widower with Sons,” or ignore them completely, like Josepha Abelen in “The Wife of the Painter Peter Abelen, with her Daughter.” Though their resistance to the confines of societal norms we as viewers are given a glimpse of the narrative on human nature that Sander weaves throughout People of the Twentieth Century.

REFERENCES

Baker, George. “Photography between Narrativity and Stasis: August Sander, Degeneration, and the Decay of the Portrait.” October 76 (Spring 1996).
Bohn-Spector, Claudia. In Focus: August Sander: Photographs from the J. Paul Getty Museum. Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2000.
Gander, Catherine. “The Photo-text,” Muriel Rukeyser and Documentary: The Poetics of Connection. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2013.
Keller, Ulrich. August Sander: Citizens of the Twentieth Century: Portrait Photographs, 1892-1952, edited by Gunther Sander, translated by Linda Keller. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1986.
Metropolitan Museum of Art. “August Sander: People of the Twentieth Century. A Photographic Portrait of Germany.”
Sander, August. August Sander: Photographs of an Epoch, 1904-1959: Man of the Twentieth Century, Rhineland Landscapes, Nature Studies, Architectural and Industrial Photographs, Images of Sardinia: [exhibition], Millerton, NY: Aperture, 1980.
Silberman, Robert. “August Sander: San Francisco,” The Burlington Magazine 145, no. 1201 (April 2003).

Banner graphic source: "At the Seaside" by William Merritt Chase, oil on canvas, painted ca. 1892. In the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and in the public domain.