August Sander German, 1876-1964 August Sander (born in Herdorf) became known for his Citizens of the Twentieth Century, an ambitious project to create a photographic document of the German people. Fascinated with photography since his youth, Sander pursued this interest during military service in Trier by serving as an assistant in a photography studio. He then spent two years working in various studios in Magdeburg, Halle, Leipzig, and Berlin, also studying painting at the Dresden Academy of Art. By 1904 Sander was operating his own photography studio in Linz, Austria, producing portraits in a painterly style. A proponent of art photography, he took part in international exhibitions, winning two gold medals in 1904. In late 1909 he moved to Cologne-Lindenthal and began photographing rural farmers in Siegerland and Westerwald. To accommodate his new clientele, he expanded his portrait style to include a simpler, more direct approach. In the 1920s Sander became interested in producing clear, sharp images printed on glossy paper, an approach he called "exact photography." During this period he formulated his plan to create a photographic study of German types, focusing on individuals from all levels of society. He began making portraits of students, citizens of small towns, farmers, industrialists, politicians, artists, merchants, soldiers, and workers. In 1929 60 of his portraits were published in the book Face of Our Time (Antlitz der Zeit). Five years later the Nazis seized the remaining copies and destroyed the plates. Sander continued to make portraits for his grand project throughout the rest of his life, but after 1934 increasingly turned to landscape and nature studies, as well as architectural photography. M.M.