August Sander Masterpieces

Featuring 60 subjects from August Sander's People of the 20th Century along with another 100 brilliant images from his large-scale project, this book presents a selection of the most stunning images from the photographer's monumental work.

August Sander is one of the greatest photographers in international photographic history. With his seminal book People of the 20th Century, he set new standards in portrait photography. Sander's aspiration was to create a typological "composite image" of his time. The ambitious project began in the 1910s and was to occupy him through the 1950s. A novel feature of this book is that all the reproductions are based on vintage prints produced and authorized by August Sander himself. The croppings and the desired tonal values are authentically rendered here for the first time in the long publication history of Sander's brilliant portrait work. The originals are from the rich holdings of the Photographische Sammlung/SK Stiftung Kultur in Cologne and from additional major collections such as the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, and the Pinakothek der Moderne in Munich.

GABRIELE CONRATH-SCHOLL is Director of the Photographische Sammlung/SK Stiftung Kultur in Cologne, Germany, and an expert on the work of August Sander.