The painter Gottfried Brockmann

Your Mirror: Portraits From the ICP Collection
Section: Labor
The German photographer August Sander started his lifelong project People of the Twentieth Century around 1922. He aimed to create a comprehensive visual document of the German population of his time. He grouped the portraits into seven categories: farmers, skilled tradesmen, women, classes and professions, artists, the city, and the “last people,” which was a reference to the elderly, the disabled, and the dead. Sander’s inclusion of these marginalized people was met with resistance by the National Socialist
party. It resulted in the confiscation and destruction of his first publication, Face of Our Time, and all its printing plates. Sander often photographed his friends, including Gottfried Brockmann (1903–1983), a fellow member of the informal artists’ group known as the Cologne Progressives. Sander photographed Brockmann in his studio, standing next to his own work and holding his paintbrushes. He seems to divert the focus of the woman in the painting, creating an uncomfortable tension.