Getty Museum

[Shepherd (Hirte)]

Date

1913

Medium

Gelatin silver print

Culture

German

Department

Photographs

Institution

Getty Museum

> August Sander observed in a radio lecture delivered in 1931 that “every person's story is written plainly on his face, though not everyone can read it. These are the runes of a new, but also ancient language.” He intended “Citizens of the Twentieth Century,” an ambitious project that would occupy him his entire professional life, to be a physiognomic portrait of the German people, a comprehensive cultural history and social analysis in pictures. In the Portfolio of Archetypes, a preface to the project, Sander established an inventory of core features—a physiognomic “baseline”—against which all other social classes and professions would be measured. Physiognomy, the study of systematic correspondence between a person’s facial features or body structure and his/her psychological character, gained popularity in the nineteenth century and has served as disturbing justification for racial profiling, discrimination, and genocide in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. > > In 1913 Sander photographed the shepherd Hermann Pithahn from the small Westerwald village of Giessenhausen. Pithahn is referred to in the Portfolio of Archetypes as “The Sage.” In keeping with the traditions of rural iconography, Sander focused on the peasant's rugged face and plain appearance to convey a sense of natural strength and wisdom. The artist's emphasis on older country folk reflects his desire to capture in their faces the last vestiges of a world that was on the brink of extinction. The shepherd is seen as the last representative of a dying breed. (See other images from the Portfolio of Archetypes: [84.XM.126.169](https://www.getty.edu/art/collection/objects/34330/august-sander-peasant-woman-westerwald-bauerin-aus-dem-westerwald-german-1912/), [84.XM.126.232](https://www.getty.edu/art/collection/objects/34392/august-sander-farmer-westerwald-bauer-westerwald-german-1910/), [84.XM.126.115](https://www.getty.edu/art/collection/objects/34276/august-sander-farmer-westerwald-westerwalder-bauer-german-about-1925/), and [85.XM.258.75](https://www.getty.edu/art/collection/objects/53697/august-sander-three-generations-of-a-farming-family-westerwald-german-1912/)) > > Adapted from *August Sander*, In Focus: Photographs from the J. Paul Getty Museum by Claudia Bohn-Spector (Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2000), 14. ©2000, J. Paul Getty Trust.

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