Progressing from the countryside to the city, this cycle was to document the types of people who made up modern Germany.
A studio photographer, August Sander departed from usual practices when he began to seek out clients among local farmers and villagers in the 1910s and to take unpretentious portraits of them, often out of doors. In the 1920s Sander announced an encyclopedic project that would incorporate those early portraits into a series of portfolios, collectively titled "Citizens of the Twentieth Century." Progressing from the countryside to the city, this cycle was to document the types of people who made up modern Germany.