Face-Off in Weimar Culture: The Physiognomic Paradigm, Competing Portrait Anthologies, and August Sander’s Face of Our Time

Abstract

August Sander’s photobook Face of Our Time is discussed in relation to interest in physiognomy in Weimar Germany. Much of this book’s success was owed to the obsession of both left- and right-wing writers with the idea that modernity reduced individuality and facial expressiveness.