Photography

===Weimar Germany was a place in economic and political chaos. The government was incredibly unstable, and the German public were dealing with the confusion of their true identiy as the country hurriedly began to modernize and evolve. However, through this time of unsteadiness and insecurity, came a wide and varied range of influential and cultural action.=== =//Photography in Weimar Germany//= Part of this new cultural movement was photography in the Weimar Republic. The photography at this time seemed to help capture World War One and preserve this War in German memory. It also took on the role of being a new way of artisitc expression, allowing Germans to portray their opinions and views on WW1 and for others to see them. In a way you could say that photography, like many other arts in the Weimar Republic at this time, helped Germany to get over but not forget the War by being able to communicate their feelings and straighten out their confusions. In a way they were able to find their true identities in a new, modern world that they were not used to. However, photography was also used as a form of political propaganda. For example, the Nazis used photography to promote and advertise their extremist-right-wing polictical party. =//Photographers in Weimar Germany//= August Sander is a famous example of a German photography during the Weimar Republic period in Germany. Sander was born on November 17th 1876 and died on April 20th 1964. Sander was working at a local mine when he first learned about photography by assisting a photographer who was working for a mining company. Sander's uncle then provided the money to buy his nephew photographic equipment, with this August Sander set up his own dark room. Sander was most famously known for continuously trying to achieve the impossible by portraying the German Society by capturing them through photography. After his service in the military, August Sander toured Germany capturing the architecture and industrial side of Germany. In 1911, Sander's life-project commenced "People in the Twentieth Century", where he set out to capture the entire German population. In the 1920s August Sander encountered the Group of Progressive Artists, these were artists who represented the radical outsiders of the Expressionist movement in the Weimar Republic who dealt with New Objectivity. The concept of New Objectivity was a new art movement that occured in the early 1920s related to expressionism. Under the Nazi Regime is work and personal life were greatly inhibited, due to their lack of ability to conform to the Nazi rules, His son, Erich, a member of the left-wing Socialist Workers' Party, was jailed for 10 years, he died soon before he was due to be released. At this same point, Sander's "German Land, German People" series was published. The Nazis strongly disapproved of his work and his book "Face of our Time" was seized and the plates destroyed. Sander was banned from working on "Man in the Twentieth Century", but still he broke the rules, this resulted in the bombing of his studio. August Sander was known as the "father of modern photography".

Each of August Sander's works are interesting because they seem to contradict and break the existing rules in society. For example the first picture is of two blind children, this goes against everything that the Nazis see as a perfect child. Again, in the second picture young girls and women are shown at work, this in a way promotes gender equality and the fact that the women should be allowed to work too.