August

Omer Fast creates complex video installations that examine the narrative line between fact and fiction, part of an emerging genre in contemporary art known as “parafiction.” This work imagines German photographer August Sander at the end of his life as he reflects on the creation of his groundbreaking portraiture series People of the 20th Century, which he made from the 1900s to the mid 1930s. Fast’s film, shot in 3D, depicts a nearly blind Sander (a fictional characterization) in his home, haunted by the death of his son and the ghosts of figures he has photographed. It considers the transition between Germany’s Weimer Republic and its Nazi era and questions whether photography as a medium can tell the truth about people and, ultimately, a nation.