August Sander
[Photographer, b. 1876, Herdorf, Germany, d. 1964, Cologne.]
From days of old, and in all periods, we find documents and books with pictures illustrating them, but photography has presented us with new possibilities and new tasks. It can depict things in magnificent beauty, but also in terrible truth, and can also deceive enormously. We must be able to bear seeing the truth, but above all we should hand down the truth to our fellow human beings and to posterity, be it favorable to us or unfavorable.
Nothing seemed to me more appropriate than to project an image of our time with absolute fidelity to nature by means of photography.
