'Sander didn't photograph people, just types. People so representative of their class, status, caste that the individual may be taken for the group.'

—Kurt Tucholsky, 1930, World Stage

The Julian Sander Gallery is pleased to present the exhibition August Sander—People without Masks in the new premises at Bonner Str. 82 in the southern part of Cologne.

August Sander created a nuanced sociological portrait of Germany over the course of his career, encompassing images of the population as well as its urban surroundings and landscapes. With his rigorous way of working, he pioneered a precise, no-frills photographic aesthetic that established the independence of the medium from painting and is considered the forerunner of conceptual art. August Sander's ability to empathize with his subjects was decisive for his work.

After the death of his father August and shortly before the publication of the book Menschen ohne Maske, Sander's son Gunther (1907 – 1987) chose photographs from the oeuvre and printed them in a unique large format for an exhibition at the Mannheimer Kunstverein in 1973. The book and the exhibition featured 130 works—including 10 landscape photographs. These photographs, which are astonishingly detailed for their size, capture a pivotal moment in Sander's artistic development and in our collective history.

The exhibition shows a selection of the rare, large-format Sander photographs. The portraits on display, created between 1910 and 1931, paint a picture of Germany's complex socio-economic landscape in the years leading up to and during the Weimar Republic. These examples of Sander's work provided the framework for People of the 20th Century, the artist's sweeping, lifelong effort to catalog contemporary German society through his photographs.

We ask for your understanding that due to the current Corona Protection Ordinance in North Rhine-Westphalia, the 2G obligation applies to retail for your and our safety. We are obliged to check your vaccination records. In addition, wearing an FFP2 mask or medical mask is mandatory.

Press release courtesy Galerie Julian Sander.