After August Sander

Siegen. The current project “Facets of the City after August Sander” by fine art photographer Thomas Kellner is being published as a photo book. Economic turbulence within Germany has led to the artist's idea of giving the public the opportunity to actively participate in the publication of his 34th monograph. The crowdfunding can be supported on Kickstarter from March 29 to April 5, 2025.
“Facets of the City after August Sander” is a tribute to the famous German photographer August Sander, who portrayed numerous different people in various places in the 20th century, mostly on commission. The photographer then sorted these portraits into portfolios and thus founded photo documentation. In his homage, Thomas Kellner takes up Sander's photo-documentary methodology and photographs 1% of a city's population based on the demographic statistics of the city of Siegen in Germany. To create a visual micro-census, a total of 1056 people are portrayed, regardless of their age, where they come from, who they are or what profession they follow. Anyone in Siegen can contact Thomas Kellner to be portrayed and become part of the project. Through Kellner's documentary methodology, the artist creates a new perspective on the society of a contemporary city and offers the viewer of the portraits the opportunity to visually experience the realities of people's lives. The photo project will be completed in celebration of August Sander's 150th birthday in 2026.

The photo book of the same title, “Facets of the City after August Sander” is a spiritual successor to the publication “Face of Our Time” by August Sander, who presented 60 selected portraits from his complete works in this photo book almost a century ago.  Kellner will also present 60 portraits from his project in his photo book, creating a miniaturized version of the entire micro-census. The art photographs are supported by competent essays by Thomas Meyer, Moritz Neumueller, and Noa-Kristin Strunk, who define the connections and differences between Kellner and Sander's work, explain Thomas Kellner's inspiration and working methods in more detail and provide insights into the fascinating connections between art and sociology. The publication of the photo book is funded via crowdfunding on the platform Kickstarter from March 29 to May 4, 2025. Kellner's 34th monograph will be published in October of this year.

August Sander was a famous German photographer who lived from 1876 to 1964 and was born in Herdorf. Herdorf is a town not far from Siegen. This geographical proximity, as well as the proximity to the photographic documentation through which Sander became known, inspired Thomas Kellner to stay close to his role model himself and to photograph his portrait series in homage to August Sander in Siegen. Based on the work of his role model, the photo artist portrays various people in different professions and places for his project. Nevertheless, there are important differences between the two works, which are also explained in more detail in Moritz Neumueller's essay in the photo book “Facets of the City after August Sander”. One relevant difference is the fact that Thomas Kellner photographed his portraits exclusively for the project, whereas August Sander only later sorted them into portfolios. After his death, Sander's individual portfolios were divided into seven volumes, from which the sixth volume in particular, “The City”, documented society in various German cities. Kellner's decision to photograph his portraits in just one city thus represents a further distinction from his role model. Kellner also refrains from using his own studio or a studio as a background and while the final portraits are partly desaturated, they still retain their color, unlike Sander's photographs, which were exclusively in black and white.
 

Thomas Meyer, Moritz Neumueller and Noa-Kristin Strunk provide their academic contributions for “Facets of the City after August Sander”. As a sociologist by training, Thomas Meyer outlines the sociological aspect of Thomas Kellner's photographic documentation in his essay. Sociology is close to portrait photography and their interaction often remains unconsidered.
Moritz Neumueller works as a curator and lecturer in the field of photography and his experience offers a deep understanding of artistic concepts and visual strategies. Neumueller's essay contextualizes the work of Thomas Kellner in an art historical perspective and analyzes the visual differences between August Sander and Thomas Kellner's social documentaries.
Due to her proximity to the artist as Kellner's assistant and her own background in art history, Noa-Kristin Strunk further enriches the photo book in the form of an essay dealing with the person of Thomas Kellner and his artistic career to date.
Together, the essays by Meyer, Neumueller and Strunk provide a vital component for understanding and deepening Kellner's project, as they shed light on the artist and art theory as well as incorporating a sociological aspect.
 

Thomas Kellner has been using photography as a medium for social reflection for over 30 years. The fine art photographer has become known for fragmenting and reassembling architecture and important monuments. Fragmentation is an incisive part of Kellner's work and, together with his proximity to border posts and portrayal of borderlines, he constantly expands the mindset of the viewer of his pictures in new ways, offering previously unseen perspectives. The idea of breaking down architecture, interiors and now society into individual parts is based on his life's journey, which itself was often littered with “breaks” and strokes of fate. By expressing this fragmentation in his work, the photo artist depicts his own obstacles, and through the newly emerging perspectives of the merged contact sheets and the portrait series, the strength and growth after the ruptures is given expression.
 

Nowadays, photo books are less in demand than they were a few years ago. There is one important reason for this in particular: photo books are facing financing problems in Germany, as rising production costs, declining funding in the cultural sector and a general reluctance to consume art are making their economic success more difficult. The market for printed works is struggling against competition from digital media, while publishers and photographers are increasingly reliant on crowdfunding or subsidies. Nevertheless, photo books remain relevant because, as physical objects, they deepen artistic expression, appeal to collectors and preserve photography as an art form in its own right - especially in a time when digital images are often only viewed briefly and quickly forgotten, printed photo books offer a more enduring and conscious way of experiencing images. Especially when paired with academic texts, which can deepen the understanding of what is seen. “Facets of the City after August Sander” is published as a photo book to maintain the constant pictorial life and to give the viewer the opportunity to experience photography tangibly.
 

Soft-Cover
Size: 25 x 30 cm
Pages: 240
Edition: 500 or more
Publisher: seltmann publishers, Berlin
Accompanying essays by
Thomas Meyer, PhD, Moritz Neumueller, PhD, Noa-Kristin Strunk
Including biographies by the participants of the project

Fundraising on Kickstarter March 29 to May 4, 2025

Price on Kickstarter is 40 Euros, Retail price afterwards 48 Euros

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