Face of Our Time

We went for a scan today and our regular consultant is on holiday in Egypt so we were delighted to be seen by Nadine, the consultant who delivered Poppy. The last time Nadine saw Poppy she would have been only four days old.. It was great to see the new baby in action on the monitor, kicking and moving arms around.. It was a very special moment for Cryno and I. Unsurprisingly Poppy was not very interested at all.

I was also pleased to receive my August Sander book in the post.

His first book, Face of our Time was published in 1929. It contains a selection of 60 portraits from his series, People of the Twentieth Century. Under the Nazi regime, his work and personal life were greatly constrained. His son Erich, who was a member of the left wing Socialist Workers' Party, was arrested in 1934 and sentenced to 10 years in prison, where he died in 1944, shortly before the end of his sentence. Sander's book Face of our Time was seized in 1936 and the plates destroyed as his images did not adhere to the ideal Aryan type. Around 1942 during World War II he left Cologne and moved to a rural area, allowing him to save most of his negatives. His studio was destroyed in a 1944 bombing raid.

His images show German people of the era as they really were and it easy to see beyond the facade of the poses and glimpse a real understanding of what they may have been like as personalities.. I don't know how he did it, but for me Sander was a true master able to capture the real essence of his subjects..