August Sander (1876-1964) devoted his life to the photographic documentation of the German people and their lives. Not only are his portraits exemplary in the way he captures the reality of his subjects, but they also function as a great anthropological work - a description of a place and time through the faces of those who posed for him. He created a definitive collection of photographs grandly entitled 'Citizens of the Twentieth Century', containing a portrait of an entire society, its structures and ways of living. His work, along with that of Karl Blossfeldt and Albert Renger-Patzsch, was pioneering in Germany, it redefined the medium as an autonomous technical and artistic form, and brought about a fundamental change in the perception of photography.