COLOGNE.- Since acquiring the August Sander Archive in 1992, Die Photographische Sammlung/SK Stiftung Kultur now holds the largest collection worldwide of the photographer's work. At the close of 2008 they will publish six images from his oeuvre in the form of limited-edition art prints - 150 copies each in two sizes.

The images selected for this exclusive edition primarily include highlights from August Sander's outstanding work People of the Twentieth Century, images which at the same time mark an important stage in the history of photography.

- Young Farmers, 1914
- Middle-Class Children, 1925
- Pastrycook, 1928
- Bricklayer, 1928
- Boxers, 1929
- Secretary at West German Radio in Cologne, 1931

August Sander (1876-1964) counts among the most important representatives of documentary photography. With his keen eye, he succeeded in producing portraits that cannot only be regarded as exemplary of society in the first half of the twentieth century, above all in the period during the Weimar Republic, in a singular way they also show the photographer's psychological empathy for his fellow men and women without thematizing it - he maintains an objectifying distance. Sander created portraits drawn from life with a wealth of detail and full of respect and history.

August Sander had a large following even during his lifetime. In 1929, for example, Alfred Döblin wrote the introduction to Sander's first book publication Face of Our Time. In 1930, Kurt Tucholsky, alias Peter Panther, as well as Luise Straus-Ernst, first wife of the artist Max Ernst, wrote reviews praising Sander's work. Walter Benjamin reviewed Sander's work in 1931 in his Short History of Photography, and on the other side of the Atlantic, the famous American photographer Walker Evans found words of acknowledgement in the magazine Hound and Horn for the images produced by his German colleague.

The prints are based on modern prints produced on the basis of Sander's original large-format glass-plate negatives, authorized by the photographer's grandson and long-standing executor of his estate, Gerd Sander, and were processed by Jean-Luc Differdange, SK Stiftung Kultur's photographer specialized in the development of August Sander modern prints as well as in the restorative retouching of the photographer's original prints. The Hürth-based company LUP AG performed the high-quality printing using highly pigmented Epson UltraChrome K3 inks with Vivid Magenta Technology on Ilford Galerie Gold Fibre Silk 310g/m2.

The images can be bought either for 249 Euro (Image Height 26 cm) or 399 Euro (Image Height 60 cm) + shipping and packing.

Die Photographische Sammlung/SK Stiftung Kultur will also issue a certificate including technical information about each print as well as details about the image's history. The prints can be framed for an additional charge.