1. August Sander
Young Farmers 1914
Sanders made a classic portrait survey of German life in the 20s and 30s.
“His concept and method is almost a caricature of Teutonic methodology, and if it had been executed by a lesser artist the result might well have been another dreary typological catalogue. Sander, however, was a very great photographer. His sensitivity to individual subjects, to expression, gesture, posture and symbols seems unerringly precise. His pictures show two truths simultaneously and intentionally; the social abstraction of occupation and the individual who serves it. The masks reveal every bit as much as the face they attempt to hide.” (1)
I like this picture of the young farmers dressed in their Sunday best, carrying their fashionable canes, on their way to some event. The date makes it particularly poignant. These young men are, as the saying goes, ‘dressed to kill’, and the date implies that they will soon be called up to fight in the Great War.
2. Lewis Baltz
The New York Times Obituary notice for Lewis Baltz quoted Baltz’s attitude to art photography – “I think being a photographer is a little like being a whore,” he once said, with characteristic dry wit. “If you’re really, really good at it, nobody will call you that.” (2)
Baltz belongs to the category of New Topographics, that is, those who find beauty in the banal, man-altered landscapes. (See also Bernd & Hilla Becher, Stephen Shore, Henry Wessel, Joe Deal, Robert Adams, Nicholas Nixon, Frank Gohlke.)
This picture makes me wonder what the architect of the building had in mind. They don’t seem to be concerned with the exterior of the building and one can only hope that the interior has something more than a utilitarian charm.
3. Philip-Lorca diCorcia
“There is very little on the outside that tells you what a person is really like on the inside”(3)
Everything in his images is constructed in advance. He says, “dramatising elements is what make it seem like a narrative.” The line between real and fictional is blurred in order to question the premise that when you see a photograph, you see the truth.
This image reminded me of Jack Vettriano’s painting, Cocktails and Broken Hearts.
In this case I wonder whether the realism of the photograph has any advantage over the
verismo of the painting.
4. William Eggleston
Investigating the relationship between photography and realism, Eggleston is a democratic (demotic?) artist showing the world in colour in an attempt to show ‘what is’.
He said, “Well, probably the best way to put it might be that at some time, not just in an instant, but over some period of time I became aware of the fact that I wanted to document examples like Kroger or Piggly Wiggly in the late ’50s, early ’60s. I had the attitude that I would work with this present-day material and do the best I could to describe it with photography, not intending to make any particular comment about whether it was good or bad or whether I liked it or not. It was just there, and I was interested in it. That’s what I still do today.” (4)
So many of Egglestone’s images follow the ‘rule of thirds’ or have the subject dead centre that they seem too considered to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. They are too selective and composed for that. 
(1) http://www.amber-online.com/exhibitions/sander-collection/detail
(2) Quote taken from a conversation between Baltz and John Gossage.
http://www.americansuburbx.com/2011/03/interview-conversation-between-lewiz.html
(3) An interview with Philip-Lorca di Corcia https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=So_FK4qnz5Q
(4) An Interview with Harmony Korine 27 November 2008.
http://www.interviewmagazine.com/art/william-eggleston/#_
Chris Whittle 