Three faces of the shutter impulse

AUGUST SANDER (1876-1964) envisioned his never-completed encyclopedic inventory of the German populace as totaling more than 500 photographs divided among seven sections comprising 45 categories. The deeply absorbing J. Paul Getty Museum show "August Sander: People of the Twentieth Century" follows the broad outlines of his classification system. In this selection of 127 portraits from the Getty's tremendous collection of 1,200-plus works by the photographer, it is as if Sander called roll and the spectrum and spectacle of humanity stepped forward.

Aged peasant woman, effete student, fiery-eyed painter -- all here. Dwarfs in their Sunday best, here. Elegant and self-possessed member of parliament, here. Waitress, composer, coal carrier, bohemian -- all here. Persecuted Jew, here. And SS chief, also here, posed in full, daunting regalia and photographed without any visible irony shortly after Sander's project had been curtailed and his son jailed for agitating against the Nazi government.

Sander never could have finished his collective portrait, even if the Nazis had not put a hostile end to his efforts. He brought order, precision and a spectacularly sensitive eye for character to his self-appointed task. But that task was as elusive as it was expansive.

He announced his aim to compile an archive of images portraying "Menschen des 20. Jahrhunderts" (People of the 20th Century) in the late 1920s, more than two decades into his career as a commercial portrait photographer based largely in Cologne. In 1929, he published a 60-image preview of the larger project called "Antlitz der Zeit" (Face of the Time). "Every person's story is written plainly on his face," he asserted in a radio address two years later. "More than anything, physiognomy means an understanding of human nature."

Sander's career became firmly established just in time to be undone by the National Socialist regime, which countered his vision of a heterogenous society with one of idealized racial purity, lethally enforced. The true "Face of the Time" had to be suppressed: Sander's book was banned, confiscated, and the printing plates were destroyed. Sander moved to the countryside, where he continued to accrue negatives for his perpetually ongoing project while shifting his professional persona to that of landscape photographer.