Painter [Gottfried Brockmann]

August Sander

1924

A gelatin-silver photograph by August Sander that presents a young painter posed beside his canvas, aiming to register the sitter’s professional identity as part of a broader typological study.

You’re immediately struck by the painter’s intense, slightly haunted gaze and the visual tension between his plain working smock and brushes and the flattened, stylized female figure painted on the canvas next to him.

Typical of Sander’s People of the 20th Century project, this 1924 portrait helped define a documentary, New Objectivity approach to photography that treated individuals as social types and visual evidence rather than intimate psychological studies.

Palette

Art Terms

Gelatin silverprint (developing-out paper) Photography Portrait Studio photography Documentary photography Neue Sachlichkeit(New Objectivity) Investigating identity

Exhibitions

August Sander (1876–1964)

1969

Photo Eye of the 20s

1970

German Drawing: The Expressionists

1974

Self Portrait: The Photographer's Persona, 1840–1985

1985