Museums: June 2004 Archives
Last August Sander post, I promise. In conjunction with the current exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Yancey Richardson is showing a selection of images from "The Woman", one of the major categories in Sander's "People of the 20th Century". Sander's project was explicitly focused on visually defining archetypical personas with the idea that one should be able to read a portrait and come away with an understanding of what the person did and what their personality was like. Unfortunately, the Met's curator prevents you from attempting to test this theory by placing the photo titles to the left of each image so that as you circle the exhibition rooms clockwise you are tipped off to the subject's profession by the title. This heavily colors the impression each portrait gives. Frankly, it would be fairly easy for many portraits to exchange titles with no ill effect. In fact, some of the subjects appear more than once in different guises, which would seem to shed some doubt on Sander's overarching theme.
The Woman
Through July 9 at Yancey Richardson Gallery
535 West 22nd Street, 3rd floor
(646) 230-9610
On Sunday, June 20, the Met will be holding a lecture and showing a film about Sander's work. Susanne Lange, director of the Sander Archiv, and research associate Gabriele Conrath-Scholl will speak from 2-3:30 pm in the Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium. The lecture will be followed by a short film (22min.), Homage to August Sander, which contrasts photographs taken by Sander in a small farming village with interviews of the inhabitants circa the late 1970s. Both events are "free with Museum admission", which means if you're not a member they cost $12.
There is also a current show of Sander's less well-known landscape photography underway at the Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C. Following the destruction of remaining copies and printing plates for Face of Our Time and increased scrutiny from the Nazi security apparatus, Sander relocated to rural >> and temporarily set aside his portrait work in favor of less politically sensitive landscapes. Thanks to Tyler Green at Modern Art Notes for the tip.
Through Sept. 5 at The Phillips Collection
1600 21st St, NW
Wash., D.C.
(202) 387-2151
Early last year I read a review of the August Sander show at SFMoMA and was dying to see it. A call to the museum revealed that the photographs would be returning to the Sander Archive in Cologne when the show concluded and I ruled out a trip to SF when the photography department couldn't definitively tell me when the show would end. Now, People of the 20th Century has unexpectedly arrived at the Metropolitan Museum of Art here in NYC.
Peruse a selection of portraits from Sander's project, a catalog of various personalities found across Germany, and one will immediately understand why the images were deemed unacceptable by the Third Reich. Some 30+ images can be seen at the Side Collection (via coincidences). Sander cataloged some seriously odd looking Germans, far from the ideal muscular, blonde-haired, blue-eyed Aryan of Hitler's fantasy. As a result, a good portion of the series was destroyed by the Nazis.
Sander's straightforward style lends an air of objectivity to his portraits. Subjects are often square to the camera, shot full-length and staring straight into the lens. A number of commentaries on his pictures note his ability to uncover inner attitudes in his subjects. Personally, I think its more likely the viewer is projecting his own biases onto the images. Specifically, I am thinking of Anthony Lake's New Yorker review of the show. Lake focused on an image of a Hitler Youth and noted how the image demonstrated the seething hate lying within this 15 year old kid. I wish I could find a version of the shot online, but I think if Lake had stuck his finger over the swastika armband, he'd have seen the uncertain bravado of a teen Boy Scout instead.
This also brought to mind two Eric Soloman pictures I saw last summer at the Laurence Miller gallery. Solomon was an early photojournalist in Germany and these two pics were taken from the peanut gallery of the Weimar-era Reichstag. The first shows Nazi delegates protesting a speech by simultaneously holding up their newspapers as an opponent took the podium. The second shows the empty seats after these same delegates have staged a walkout. The lone Nazi remaining is Joseph Goebbels. The to-be propoganda minister calmly watches the procedings, wearing a tweed suit. In the absence of his party uniform and any identifcation of who he is, it's quite difficult to imagine what evil would spill from his mouth. We are quick to overestimate the insightfulness of photographs.
Through Sept 19th at the Metropolitan Museum of Art
1000 Fifth Avenue at 82nd Street
212-535-7710
