There is a lot of misinformation in the world about August Sander, and what my family has done with his work. This is a big topic, so I will not be able to touch on all topics in a single post. I want to start be defining a very skeletal history of what happened to August Sander’s work after his death.
August Sander had 4 Children: Erich, Gunther, Sigrid and Helmut. Helmut and Sigrid were twins, Helmut died very young. Erich, August’s eldest son, died in prison in Siegburg where he was imprisoned by the NSDAP (Nazi’s). Sigrid had moved to the USA via Iceland, which is a story unto itself. Gunther was a photographer and owner of SANDER FOTO in Cologne. It was Gunther who took over the negatives and pretty much everything else at August’s death.
Guther continued to work with the material by promoting it in exhibitions as well as selling both prints he made (posthumous prints) from the negatives as well as selling vintage (prints made by August, or during his lifetime and under his authority) prints. He also worked together with Lothar Schirmer on a number of publications until the two of them had a falling out and stopped working together. This is also a story unto itself. Gunther sold work through a number of galleries in Europe and through the Halstedt Gallery in the USA. Tom Halstedt continued to sell August’s work until my father moved to Washington DC in 1975.
When Gerd (my father) started the SANDER Gallery in Washington DC in 1976 he took over the representation of August Sander’s work in the USA. He has spent the years since then promoting, buying and selling the work of August Sander internationally.
In 1987 my grandfather Gunther died. On thanksgiving day in 1987 my aunt Sigrid received a phone call from Germany saying that Gunther had passed away and was already buried by his second wife Suzanne Sander. (Again a story to be told another day). Before Gunther passed he had signed the entire remaining body of August Sander’s work as well as all of the books and painting over to my father Gerd. Unfortunately my father had to litigate to actually take possession of what was rightfully his. Along the way a number of works as well as a greater part of the books were sold or given away. Gerd continues to buy these items back from the open art market as they show up for sale.
In 1988 my parents moved back to Germany where my father started to catalogue and organise what he called the August Sander Archive, a name he started using in the mid 1980’s. With the help of his long time friend and fellow photographer Jean-Luc Differdange who also learned his trade from my grandfather Gunther, he created a complete set of contact sheets and proceeded to work on organising and researching both the historical and the personal impact of the individual images. He later moved to St.Apern Straße in Cologne where he then housed the August Sander Archive.
During this time he and Jean-Luc also started to make modern prints using the original glass negatives. Most notably was the edition of Antlitz der Zeit which was made for the 150th anniversary of the photographic medium.
He also started to hire people top help him with his research including Anne Ganteführer-Trier and Gabriele Conrath-Scholl whom my father helped secure a Getty scholarship. Gabriele Conrath-Scholl later stepped into the position of director of the SK-Stiftung Kultur (more on this in a moment) after the director Dr. Susanne Lange became ill and could not continue in her position. After structuring the material to a point where the project needed to be better financed he started to look for potential supporters.
This is when Gustaf Adolf Schroeder and the Stadt Sparkasse Koeln (now Sparkasse KoelnBonn) came into the play and offered to purchase the whole archive. My father agreed to sell all of it based on the mutual understanding that the work on August Sanders history and archive would continue. This plan was clearly defined in 1988 when my parents considered what to do with the material Gunther had passed on to my father. Unfortunately this document did not become part of the contract between my father and the SK-Stiftung Kultur. As part of the sales agreement my father was allowed to print a limited amount of modern prints as part of his payment. I will explain how many prints of which image were printed in a separate post. Part of the convolute sold were certain rights to August Sander’s work. Other things included a portion of the letters, books and camera equipment as well as some of the furniture August owned. The assumption that my father sold everything is very simple to rebuke if you have paid attention to the market, but just to make it clear, my father did not sell everything he had.
The SK-Stiftung Kultur has been selling August Sander inkjet prints through FOAM editions in Holland of recent as well as selling these prints in the SK-Stiftungs bookstore. My father and his assistant Jean-Luc have stopped printing pictures by August Sander as this right was revoked by Prof. Boegner of the SK-Stiftung who are in fact the copyright holders until those rights expire on April 21, 2034.
In a separate post I will address the issue of which prints have which value, but considering the rumours I have heard lately I do feel I should at least differentiate between what it is I do sell, and what I don’t sell.
I sell the following types of prints of works by August Sander:
- Vintage August Sander Prints
- Posthumous prints by Gunther Sander
- Posthumous prints by Gerd Sander
I do not sell reprints. We could of course enter into a discussion about the definition of the word, but as even the terms I used above require a degree of interpretation I will not do that. I will say that, in my opinion, a reprint is a mass produced print of lesser quality which has no particular collectors value. A case in point are the reprints made by the SK-Stiftung. These are signed by Gabriele Conrath-Scholl who is the director, but is neither a photographer nor a darkroom technician nor an artist or a member of the Sander family. This effectively make the authorisation of the inkjet prints as meaningful as if they were signed by anyone who works at the archive. There have been other situations with other archives that have run into the same issue. Notably there was an attempt in France to create a reprint edition of Kertez’s photographs in an attempt to generate some money. This failed horribly because the artistic intent was not understood, and as such could not be implemented. This is the case with the reprints that the SK-Stiftung sells as well. In my opinion the selection is based purely on a monetary focus, which is understandable, but also key in understanding why those prints will probably never be worth more than they cost to purchase now.
I am now representing the work of August Sander that my family owns as well as works by a number of key collectors. The SK-Stiftung is a research institution and as such does not sell photographs (except for the aforementioned inkjet prints). I have taken steps to secure the validity of the prints made by Jean-Luc and my father and signed by my father. The primary step being registering a trademark on the blindstamp August used to mark his prints. This blindstamp has only been used by 3 people to date, August Sander, Gunther Sander and Gerd Sander. The reason for my registering the trademark is to secure it against fraudulent use beyond the expiration date of the copyrights on August Sander’s photographs which is in 19 years (April 20, 2034). My father and I spend a great deal of time looking at and discussing the various prints we see. We have, and continue to verify prints as being originals. We continue to curate exhibitions, both of our own accord and as we are asked to do so by museums and galleries around the world. Being as there are a very large number of institutions in the world that have sizeable collections of August Sander prints this is only logical.
August Sander had a very deep spiritual understanding of photography. It is this understanding that has guided my family in their work with this material for over a century. It is this understanding that continues to guide me.
