Getty Museum

[Farmer, Westerwald (Bauer, Westerwald)]

Date

1910

Medium

Gelatin silver print

Culture

German

Department

Photographs

Institution

Getty Museum

> August Sander had planned to preface his life's work, the proposed “Citizens of the Twentieth Century,” with a “portfolio of archetypes” (*Stammappe*) devoted to the peasant as the prototypical building block of human society. “The models for the scheme,” he recalled in 1954 in the introduction to the portfolio, “arose from the small area around my birthplace in the Westerwald. People whose habits I had known from my youth seemed, by virtue of their strong connection with nature, ideally suited to the realization of my idea. . . . I classified all the types I encountered in relation to one basic type, who had all the characteristics of mankind in general.” > > After opening his portrait studio in Cologne-Lindenthal in 1910, Sander often traveled to the small villages and farming communities of the Westerwald in search of new clients and to pursue his personal projects. August Sander's treatment of the German farmer represents a unique homage to a vanishing era. It reflects, in part, the country's dramatic transition from a mostly agricultural society to an urban, industrialized state. Toward the end of the nineteenth century, 40 percent of the German population still worked in the countryside; by the mid-1920s, this number was cut almost in half. > > Of the 1,200 photographs by Sander in the Getty Museum’s collection about 500 portraits and landscapes were taken by the photographer in the Westerwald. (See other images from the Portfolio of Archetypes: [84.XM.126.282](https://www.getty.edu/art/collection/objects/34437/august-sander-shepherd-hirte-german-1913/), [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.126.115](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), 12, 16. ©2000, J. Paul Getty Trust.

The authoritative record is held by Getty Museum. LinkedCulture surfaces this object and its connections; it does not alter institutional metadata.