Typomania and the Cross-Sectional View

Sander's ultimate photographic and sociological project analyzed and assessed by contemporary scholars

In 2022, the Centre Pompidou presented an exhibition on People of the Twentieth Century, the magnum opus of German photographer August Sander (1876-1964). The museum refreshed the project by placing it in dialogue with the work of his contemporaries. Typomania and the Cross-Sectional View picks up where the Pompidou exhibition left off, offering the latest research on Sander's decades-long endeavor to visually record his native country's populace. The text-focused volume reiterates that the photographer was not alone in his obsessive examination of German society and its typologies. Portraits by Otto Dix, silhouette prints by Gerd Arntz and silent movie film stills are emblematic of an era in which the representative social samples identified by Sanders permeated art as well as popular culture. Buoyed by an extensive bibliography, Typomania and the Cross-Sectional View is a true August Sander visual reader for the 21st century.