Töpfermeister aus Frechen (Master Potter from Frechen)

Töpfermeister, 1934, is part of a large series of photographs titled People of the Twentieth Century. August Sander's monumental photographic project is a powerful document that spans half a century and captures a concrete period of turbulent German history, from the Weimar years to Hitler's rise to power. The book is divided into seven sections: The Farmer, The Skilled Tradesman, The Woman, Classes and Professions, The Artists, The City, and The Last People. Sander intended to create a visual encyclopedia of German "types" that showed the country's growing human diversity, in the tradition of French eighteenth-century verbal encyclopedias compiled by Denis Diderot and Jean Le Rond d'Alembert. In 1936, the Nazi authorities confiscated Sander's first publication "Face of Our Time" and destroyed the printing plates because the images did not match the Aryan ideal. Töpfermeister is representative of Sander's uncompromising, direct and candid approach to photographic portraiture.