Farm Girls, Westerwald

In 1927, August Sander wrote, Let me honestly tell the truth about our age and our people. He photographed thousands of everyday people, young and old, in order to show Germany not as a homogenous nation but as diverse as it really was. Sander made portraits of blacksmiths, boxers, businessmen, cooks, doctors, farmers, gypsies, laborers, lawyers, mothers, poets, priests, tramps, and the unemployed, as discrete individuals and in groups. In his aim to catalogue all types of German people, Sander brought us to these young sisters from his native Westerwald. Sander was interested in the now-discredited theory of physiognomy, the relationship between physical and psychological features. From physical appearance to body language to environment, how might these girls be typecast?