August Sander

August Sander was a German photographer who loved documenting fellow Germans. August had a huge passion for nature mainly down to his mother who is a herbalist, who often took him foraging for wild plants. August gave up the studio to go travailing on bike where he photographed people he came upon. During the 1920s and 1930s August came under pressure from the Nazi's who destroyed his photographic plates from the book face of our time which included 60 portraits from his travels. However during the seconded war, August managed to escape from Cologne and save many of his negatives.



I decided to include one of the 60 portraits from the book, face of our time. I’ve chosen this image especially because of the shear age of the boy. No way could you be able to say that this is a man ready for war. A man ready to kill and die for his country, surely not. A young, gullible child, who's about to be departed to fight a war which he has no idea how it was caused. This child is at most 16 years old, i would love to know his feelings about what he fought about the war at the time.

http://www.cosmopolis.ch/english/cosmo50/august_sander.htm
http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/exhibitions/cruelandtender/sander.htm
http://zoltanjokay.de/zoltanblog/2010/02/august-sander-menschen-des-20-jahrhundertsaugust-sander-people-of-the-20th-century-11/