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August Sander

Circus Artists, Düren (Zirkusartisten), 1930, printed later

Description

Maker

  • August Sander, 1876-1964, German

Title

Circus Artists, Düren (Zirkusartisten)

Year

1930, printed later

Medium

Gelatin silver print

Dimensions

Image: 21.9 x 29.8 cm (8 5/8 x 11 3/4 inches)

Type

  • Works on Paper,
  • Photographs

Credit

Edgar J. Lownes and Walter H. Kimball Funds

Object Number

84.022

Projects & Publications

Publications

Manual / Issue 3

Circus
Read Online

Bullentin of Rhode Island School of Design, Museum Notes

Exhibition History

Exhibition History

Circus

August 1, 2014 - February 22, 2015

In this photograph, August Sander shows a group of circus performers at rest behind the caravan rather than in a dramatic moment of performance under the big top, emphasizing the everyday reality of circus artists’ transient, unconventional lives. Featuring performers of different races and a woman in Orientalist costume, Sander’s image reinforces the exotic qualities of the circus. During the Weimar era, Sander produced nearly 600 portrait photographs of Germans for a project that he called People of the 20th Century.

Dreams and Nightmares

November 5, 2004 - January 23, 2005

August Sander had been a portrait photographer for more than twenty years when, in the mid 1920s, he re-examined his archive and started to develop the monumental project People of the Twentieth Century, which was intended to record all social classes and occupational types throughout German society.

Circus Artistes was to be part of the project’s portfolio devoted to big city life, a place of decadence and degeneration, but also of entertainment. The circus people represented a romantic escape from the constraints of society; yet Sander chose as his subject not a dramatic performance in the Big Top, but an everyday scene among the caravans, where the performers were eating and listening to a gramophone. In Sander’s plan for People of the Twentieth Century, each man or woman represented a specific social type, expressed through his or her clothing, body, and posture. Nevertheless, the ushers and performers gaze out directly at the viewer, challenging the anonymity of Sander’s project.

Capturing the Light

September 22 - November 12, 1989

Use

The images on this website can enable discovery and collaboration and support new scholarship, and we encourage their use. This object is in Copyright. This object is Circus Artists, Düren (Zirkusartisten) with the accession number of 84.022. To request high-resolution files or new photography, please send an email to imagerequest@risd.edu and include your name and the object's accession number.

Feedback

We view our online collection as a living documents, and our records are frequently revised and enhanced. If you have additional information or have spotted an error, please send feedback to curatorial@risd.edu.

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