The faces of Germany.

• Position: The World Yesterday - Portrait photographer August Sander - Biography

ONE OF THE MOST ambitious undertakings in the history of photography, "People of the Twentieth Century" occupied August Sander for some 40 years, from the early 1920s until his death in 1964. He took portraits of countless German citizens and then categorized them by social type and occupation--from farm laborers to circus performers to prosperous businessmen and aristocrats. Remarkable for their unflinching realism and deft analysis of character and lifestyle, Sander's individual images stand out as high points of photographic portraiture and collectively propose the idea of the archive as art.

"Endowed with extraordinary observational powers and heroic determination, August Sander has left us with a compelling collective portrait of the German people during one of the most turbulent periods in history," notes Philippe de Montebello, director of The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "These powerful images, with their combination of unflattering objectivity and sympathy for the human condition, exert ed a profound influence on later generations of photographers, among them the Americans Walker Evans and Diane Arbus."

The son of a carpenter, Sander was born in 1876 in a farming and mining community east of Cologne. His introduction to picture-taking came while working as a young apprentice in the mines, when a visiting photographer asked the boy to serve as his guide. With the support of his uncle, he soon bought his first photographic equipment.

After military service and apprenticeship in Trier with the photographer Georg Jung, Sander traveled to Berlin, Magdeburg, Halle, Dresden, and Leipzig. He attended the Royal Academy of Art in Dresden as an observer. Eventually, he obtained employment at a photography studio in Linz, Austria, which he took over in 1902--the same year he married Anna Seitmacher--and renamed Studio for Pictorial Photography. He produced a broad range of work, including portrait, architectural, landscape, industrial, and still life photography. His work was exhibited widely, winning a variety of awards.

Despite his provincial background, Sander became involved with many of the avant-garde artistic ideas of his day, among them the Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity), a movement led by his friend, painter Otto Dix, which advocated a return to realism and social commentary in art.

At the outbreak of World War I, Sander was called up for military service and did not return until the war ended in 1918. Around 1922, Sander, who had...