The August Sander Journals
A weekly tale narrated by Julian Sander
Episode 2
When my father Gerd Sander took possession of August Sander’s negatives he tasked himself with the job of sorting and structuring them. That work is the foundation upon which almost all scholarship about August‘s work is built.
Every Sander generation starting with August were/are trained photographers. This skills learned informed dad‘s ability to work with objects of the photographic medium as well as his ability to understand the vision of any photographer whose work he engaged with. It also supplied him with a very useful set of skills.
When dad working with the negatives he made a very simple contact sheet rig. It was a wood box mounted under his enlarger table which had a lightbulb in it connected to an exposure timer. The box had a glass covering above which was a lid that had felt on the bottom to protect the work below. He would lay a glass plate negative on the exposure glass, cover it with a piece of photo paper and expose it. As the surface of photo material reacts to light by turning dark, all the area that was not covered by a negative was fully exposed, and turned black. This can be seen, for example, in the ASA Archive Number ASA.20.612 shown above.
At first dad did not think much of it, until he realized that putting stickers on the contact sheets to be able to write on them was not an optimal solution. Enter the mat cutter…
As the negatives were all in standard sizes, dad made masks from mat board which he then laid on his rig, where he placed the negative in the opening, photo paper on top and bingo, he had white space to write on.That is how the remaining 9000+ works, like ASA.3.8.8 ended up with a usable area around the image.
The contact sheets were key as my grandfather Gunther had rearranged the negatives based on his own criteria. Dad needed to get an overview. He always said that you can understand a photographers work by looking at their contact sheets. I think he was referring more to 35mm contacts, but the idea is clear. You see more of how a photographer sees through an in depth look at their work. To structure Augusts work this was the only way to go. Why dad started with the August Sander Archive group 20 I do not know. But that question is for another day.
Have a great day! Julian
Ps. Sorry for the delay this week. I was busy hanging the Chargesheimer — The Great show in my gallery.
