August Electric sander was the boy of a carpenter working in the mining industry. When working at the local mine, Smoother 1st learned all about photography by assisting the lensman world health organization was working for the mining company. By having support from either his uncle he acquired photographic devices & install his have darkroom. He spent his military machine service (1897 – 1899) as a photographer's helper, & a next years vagabondage through Germany. Within 1901 he started working for the photograph studio within Graz, eventually becoming the partner (1902) and then its resole owner (1904). He left Graz within 1910 and set up the fresh studio within Cologne.

In a early Twenties Smoother joined the "Group of Progressive Artists" witharound Cologne & began plans to document contemporary society in the portrait series. Inside 1927 Sander and writer Ludwig Marthar traveled through Sardinia for three months, in which he took around Five hundred exposure. Yet, the plotted book detailing his travels was non completed.

Electric sander's number one book Face of my Period was published within 1929. It contains the choice of Sixty portraits from either his series Humans of the Twentieth Century. Under a Nazi regime, his work & family life were greatly constrained. His boy Erich, world health organization was the member of the left wing Socialist Workers' Person (SAP), was inside remission in 1934 and sentenced to 10 years around prison, around which he died in 1944, shortly before a prevent of his phrase. Drum sander's book Face of my Period was seized around 1936 and the plates ruined. When you took a subsequent decade, Smoother's functiin focused primarily on nature and landscape photography. Once World War II broke out he left Cologne and moved to the rural vicinity, allowing for him to save virtually all of his negatives. His studio was destroyed around the 1944 bombing raid.

Smoother's act includes landscape, nature & severity, architecture, and street photography, however he is virtually all swell known for his portraits, every bit exemplified by his series Population of the Twentieth Century. Therein series he aims to show a cross-division of society when you took the Weimar Republic. A series is divided into vii sections: A Farmer, A Skilled Tradesman, A Woman, Classes & Professions, A Creative person, A City, & A Endure Humans (homeless, veterans, etc.).