Farmer on His Way to Church, 1925

August Sander

August Sander’s stately black-and-white portraits of German citizens helped define documentary photography in the early 20th century. Though Sander also shot landscapes, he’s most famous for “People of the 20th Century,” an encyclopedic series of portraits of the artist’s countrymen, which he completed over four decades. His subjects range from farm children to circus performers, secretaries to beggars. Sander captured them all with an intimate, typological approach that influenced generations of artists including Walker Evans, Diane Arbus, and Bernd and Hilla Becher. Sander’s work has been exhibited in New York, Cologne, Paris, Berlin, and Tokyo, and has been the subject of exhibitions at the Stedelijk Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, Foam Fotografiemuseum, and the Getty Center. His individual photographs have sold for up to six figures on the secondary market.