“Over the years, one of the things that fascinated me most about August Sander is that, given so much tragedy and darkness in his life … how did Sander re-emerge after the war as the great, iconic photographer that we have come to recognize him as today?” Focusing on Sander’s reception among American photographers, Crump spoke about a portrait by Sander of the philosopher Max Scheler that belonged to Richard Avedon. “A three-quarter view, and shot against a neutral dark wall, the portrait is haunting and calls to mind some of Avedon's own jarring portrait photographs from the late 1960s and early 1970s, and the titling in which Avedon wished to produce an objective documentation of his sitter[.]”
From People of the Twentieth Century: Group IV, Portfolio 19, Photograph 10