Getty Museum

Bohemian [the Painter Gottfried Brockmann, Cologne]

Date

1922

Medium

Gelatin silver print

Culture

German

Department

Photographs

Institution

Getty Museum

> August Sander’s Cologne studio was a popular gathering place for young artists, who engaged the photographer in lively debates about the pressing social and aesthetic concerns of the day. Although he was considerably older than most of them, he frequently showed his work in their exhibitions. In 1922 Sander made this picture of his friend Gottfried Brockmann (1903-83), a young painter who was associated with the Cologne Progressives and who lived with the Sanders for almost two years. The image shows Brockmann in front of a neutral backdrop, his effeminate slouch and solicitous gaze violating all conventional rules of masculinity. > > In their stunning reversal of gender roles, the portraits of Brockmann and Helene Abelen (see [84.XM.498.9](https://www.getty.edu/art/collection/objects/40591/august-sander-painter's-wife-helene-abelen-german-1926/)) point to an interesting problem in Sander's physiognomic enterprise. By providing vivid proof that social identities in Weimar Germany were far more fluid and complex than even Sander may have realized, they began to undermine his classificatory system. At a time of chaotic struggle between the old and the new, they resisted precisely the certainties > that Sander's typological project “Citizens of the Twentieth Century” was supposed to provide, namely that people could be documented, classified, and thus understood. Photography curator John Szarkowski, in his consideration of Sander's work in *Looking at Photographs: 100 Pictures from the Collection of the Museum of Modern Art* (1973), said that “his pictures show us two truths simultaneously and in delicate tension: the social abstraction of occupation and the individual soul who serves it.” Fortunately, Sander was too good a photographer to let the individual in his portraits slip by without notice. Yet, to the degree that the unique and ambiguous asserted itself, Sander's structure came undone. Rather than confirm that the typical German was still accessible to interpretation, it proved that he did not exist. > > For more information on “Citizens of the Twentieth Century,” see [84.XM.126.282](https://www.getty.edu/art/collection/objects/34437/august-sander-shepherd-hirte-german-1913/) and [84.XM.126.83](https://www.getty.edu/art/collection/objects/34244/august-sander-portrait-of-two-men-german-negative-1912-print-1920s/). > > Adapted from *August Sander*, In Focus: Photographs from the J. Paul Getty Museum by Claudia Bohn-Spector (Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2000), 50. ©2000, J. Paul Getty Trust.

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