August Sander: Face of Our Time

One of the legendary classics among German photography books, August Sander’s Face of Our Time, is now available again. Compiled by August Sander himself, the book was first published in 1929, with a foreword by German writer Alfred Dublin. On its first publication, it was advertised as follows: The sixty shots of twentieth-century Germans which the author includes in his Face of Our Time represent only a small selection drawn from August Sander’s major work, which he began in 1910 and which he has spent twenty years producing and adding fresh nuances to. The author has not approached this immense self-imposed task from an academic standpoint, nor with scientific aids, and has received advice neither from racial theorists nor from social researchers. He has approached his task as a photographer from his own immediate observations of human nature and human appearances, of the human environment, and with an infallible instinct for what is genuine and essential.