Facets of the City after August Sander

“Kellner’s tribute could be understood as an update and continues the artistic and photo-historical position that Sander established in his portrait body of work ”Face of Our Time” almost a century ago.” Dr. Thomas Meyer. 2025. “August Sander: Sozialforschung Mit Der Kamera / Social Studies with the Camera.” In Thomas Kellner. Facetten Der Großstadt Nach August Sander / Thomas Kellner. Facets of the City After August Sander, edited by Oliver Seltmann, 8–25. Berlin: Seltmann Publishers.

Thomas Kellner’s Facets of the City is a photographic project conceived as a contemporary homage to August Sander on the 150th anniversary of his birth. The project reconsiders how society can be represented through portrait photography in the twenty-first century.

Between 2023 and 2026, Thomas Kellner portrayed 1,056 people, representing one percent of the population of Siegen, Germany. Selected according to demographic criteria such as age, gender, education, and migration background, the participants form a statistical cross-section of the city. The work constitutes a visual microcensus: an artistic model that translates demographic data into a photographic representation of contemporary society.

Rather than documenting individuals in isolation, the series examines the relationships between biography, profession, social background, and personal identity. Each portrait incorporates appearance, gesture, clothing, and surroundings. Viewed individually, the photographs portray distinct personalities; viewed together, the 1,056 portraits form a photographic portrait of society in contemporary Siegen.

The project extends Thomas Kellner’s long-standing artistic method of deconstruction and reconstruction from architecture to society. In his architectural works, Kellner fragments monuments into numerous individual photographs and reconstructs them as a new visual whole. In Facets of the City, this principle is transferred to portrait photography: 1,056 individual people become the elements from which a complex image of contemporary society emerges.

While August Sander developed a typological portrait of society based largely on professions and social groups, Thomas Kellner replaces classification with a statistically informed cross-section of contemporary urban society. His Visual Microcensus emphasizes diversity and connection rather than fixed social categories. Facets of the City thus operates simultaneously as portraiture, sociological observation, and conceptual photography, asking how a society can be represented through the many individuals who constitute it.

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Portraiture has long served not only to represent individuals but also to reflect the societies in which they live. In photography, appearance, clothing, gesture, profession, and social environment can reveal relationships between personal identity and broader social structures. This relationship between the individual portrait and the portrait of society is central to Thomas Kellner’s Facets of the City after August Sander.

In portrait photography, identity is shaped not only by facial appearance but also by posture, gaze, clothing, surroundings, and the way a person presents themselves to the camera. In Kellner’s portraits, these visual elements provide clues to individual biographies while contributing to the larger representation of contemporary society.

Photography expanded the social significance of portraiture by making it possible to document people systematically across different environments and social groups. The photographic portrait became not only a representation of an individual but also a means of recording social structures, identities, and historical change. This potential became fundamental to August Sander’s approach and provides an important historical reference for Kellner’s project.

August Sander demonstrated this potential in his monumental project People of the 20th Century. By portraying people from different professions, generations, and social backgrounds and organizing them within a systematic structure, he sought to create a photographic portrait of the society of his time. For Thomas Kellner, this relationship between the individual portrait and the larger social image provides the historical point of departure for Facets of the City.

Thomas Kellner continues this dialogue in Facets of the City after August Sander while developing a distinctly contemporary approach. Instead of adopting Sander’s typological classification, Kellner uses demographic data to construct a visual microcensus of Siegen. The resulting 1,056 portraits reflect a society shaped by diverse biographies, identities, professions, generations, and social backgrounds. The project thus connects Sander’s historical model with the question of how a photographic portrait of society can be created in the 21st century.

Facets of the City is a visual microcensus of Siegen, Germany. The project includes people who were born in Siegen, moved to the city, work there, or regularly spend their free time there. Through 1,056 individual portraits, Thomas Kellner represents one percent of Siegen’s population. The project is based on a population of 105,579 residents as recorded on January 27, 2023.

Thomas Kellner set out to reflect the diversity of Siegen’s population in his portraits, as the following statistical analysis demonstrates. He photographed people of different ages, cultural backgrounds, and educational levels, as well as people with disabilities.

Of the 1,056 people portrayed, 55% were women, 44% were men, and four were recorded as diverse. 45% were born in Siegen, while 70% lived in the city. 92% named Siegen as a place where they worked or spent their leisure time.

People with disabilities were deliberately included in the project as part of the diverse population of Siegen. Approximately 14% of those portrayed reported having a disability. Since around one in five people in Siegen has a registered disability, the call for participants specifically encouraged people with disabilities to take part. This was an important part of Thomas Kellner’s aim to create a visual microcensus that represents the diversity of Siegen’s population as closely as possible.

The project also sought to reflect the cultural and geographical diversity of Siegen’s population. In addition to gender, participants’ geographical backgrounds and migration histories were recorded. The people portrayed had connections to countries across Europe, Africa, the Americas, Asia, and Australia and Oceania; some were recorded as stateless or provided no information. Approximately 20% of participants reported a migration background. Outside Europe, Asia accounted for the largest share at 3%, followed by Africa at 2% and the Americas at 2% (1% U.S./Canada and 1% South and Central America). Australia and Oceania were represented by one person.

Europe: Overall, 86% of the participants were German. The second-largest group, at approximately 4%, was classified as originating from the former Soviet Union, following the statistical categories used by the City of Siegen. Italy accounted for 2%, while Spain, France, and Turkey each accounted for 1%. Participants from Belgium, Finland, Greece, Ireland, Latvia, the Netherlands, Austria, Poland, Romania, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom were also represented, each accounting for less than 1%.

Thomas Kellner encountered people with a wide range of educational backgrounds across Siegen. Among those portrayed, 62% reported having obtained the Abitur, the German qualification for university entrance. Realschule was attended by 23%, Hauptschule by 19%, and Fachoberschule by 13%. As many younger people also participated in the project, 10% were still attending school. Less than 1% reported having no school-leaving qualification.

On his journey through Siegen’s community, Thomas Kellner met many people with diverse educational backgrounds. Through his portraits and group photos, he brought together people with different levels of schooling. 62% reported having completed high school. The second-most common educational background was the intermediate secondary school, at 23%. Nineteen percent attended the lower secondary school. Additionally, 13% of participants attended the technical high school. Since many younger people took part in the project, 10% of the participants are still in school. Less than one percent has no high school diploma.

Participants also provided information about their income. The figures refer to annual net income in euros. 36% reported an annual net income of less than €15,000. 27% reported an income between €15,000 and €33,000, while another 27% reported between €33,000 and €70,000. Approximately 11% had an annual net income of more than €70,000.

The statistical analysis of Facets of the City was compared with demographic data from the City of Siegen in order to assess how closely the visual microcensus reflects the city’s population. The composition of the 1,056 people portrayed does not correspond exactly to the demographic distribution of Siegen. For example, men account for approximately 44% of the participants, a deviation of around five percentage points from their share of the city’s population. The most significant difference occurs in the age distribution. The 50–59 and 60–69 age groups are particularly strongly represented, accounting for approximately 21% and 41% of those portrayed respectively. The 60–69 age group shows a deviation of around 30 percentage points from its corresponding share of Siegen’s population. This overrepresentation also reflects Thomas Kellner’s own age and the social networks through which participants were reached.

The statistical analysis accompanying Facets of the City reveals more than the demographic diversity of Siegen’s population. Behind the data are 1,056 individual people with distinct personalities, abilities, biographies, and life stories. Together, their portraits transform statistical categories into a complex photographic portrait of contemporary society.
 

Thomas Kellner was born in Bonn, Germany, in 1966 and studied Art, Sociology, Politics, and Economics at the University of Siegen. In 1996, he received the Kodak Young Talent Award and subsequently established his professional career as an artist. Based in Siegen, Kellner has developed an internationally recognized body of photographic work and has exhibited worldwide. He became a member of the German Society for Photography (DGPh) in 2003 and was appointed to the German Photographic Academy (DFA) in 2026. His academic background in art and the social sciences provides an important context for his continuing exploration of the relationship between the individual, society, and photographic representation.

Thomas Kellner is internationally known for a photographic method based on fragmentation, deconstruction, and reconstruction. Using analogue photography, he divides his subjects into numerous individual images and combines them into a new visual whole. First developed in his representations of architectural landmarks, this method challenges the idea of photography as a single fixed viewpoint and reflects the movement of human vision across a subject. Art historian Prof. Dr. Irina Chmyreva has described Kellner’s approach as a “visual analytical synthesis.” In his portrait projects, Kellner extends this principle from architecture to people and society: individual portraits become fragments that together form a complex photographic portrait of society.

This artistic approach also shapes Facets of the City after August Sander. Building on August Sander’s historical model of portraying society through individuals, Kellner develops a contemporary approach based on demographic data and the visual microcensus. The 1,056 individual portraits become elements of a larger photographic portrait of society, exploring identity, diversity, and social structures in twenty-first-century Siegen.

Facets of the City documents the diversity and complexity of contemporary urban society through portrait photography. Based on Thomas Kellner’s visual microcensus of 1,056 people in Siegen, the publication presents a curated selection of 60 portraits accompanied by biographical texts. The individual portraits provide insights into personal lives, experiences, and social backgrounds while collectively forming a photographic portrait of contemporary society.

Each portrait is conceived as a carefully staged yet authentic representation of an individual. Rather than focusing exclusively on outward appearance, Kellner brings personal stories, cultural identities, and social relationships to the fore. Viewed together, the portraits interact with one another, creating a visual narrative that reflects the diversity of a community. In this way, the publication preserves not only faces but also stories, continuing the documentary tradition established by August Sander in the Siegerland region at the beginning of the twentieth century.

The book establishes a direct dialogue with August Sander’s monumental project People of the 20th Century. Like Sander, Kellner explores how individual portraits can contribute to a broader photographic image of society. While Sander developed a typological structure based on professions and social groups, Kellner uses demographic data to create a visual microcensus of contemporary Siegen. Facets of the City thus brings the idea of the photographic portrait of society into the twenty-first century, reflecting identities shaped by diverse biographies, generations, cultural backgrounds, and social realities.

Beyond the portraits and biographical texts, Facets of the City includes scholarly essays by Moritz Neumüller, Thomas Meyer, and Noa-Kristin Strunk. Their contributions examine Kellner’s project from perspectives including photography, art history, and social identity, placing the work within broader discussions of portraiture and the representation of society. Together, the photographs, biographies, and essays make the book both an artistic monograph and a critical examination of how contemporary portrait photography can represent society.

August Sander’s People of the Twentieth Century (Menschen des 20. Jahrhunderts) provides an important historical reference for Thomas Kellner’s Facets of the City. Sander sought to portray the society of his time through systematic portraits of individuals from different professions and social groups. Kellner takes up the fundamental idea of creating a photographic portrait of society but develops a different method for the twenty-first century. Instead of Sander’s typological structure, he uses demographic data to create a visual microcensus of 1,056 people in Siegen. Facets of the City thus continues the dialogue initiated by Sander while replacing fixed social categories with a statistically informed cross-section of contemporary urban society.

Published in 1929, August Sander’s Face of Our Time: Sixty Photographs of German People (Antlitz der Zeit) presents a selection of 60 portraits from the photographic work that would become part of his larger project People of the Twentieth Century. Nearly a century later, Thomas Kellner’s Facets of the City likewise brings together a selection of 60 portraits from a much larger project: his visual microcensus of 1,056 people in Siegen. The shared number of portraits creates a striking point of reference between the two publications, while their different methods reflect two distinct approaches to portraying society in their respective times.

In Face of Our Time, each of the 60 photographs functions as an individual portrait while simultaneously contributing to a broader image of German society during the Weimar Republic. Sander portrayed people from different professions and social groups and placed the individual within a larger typological structure. The sequence of portraits thus allows the book to be read not only as a collection of individual photographs but also as a photographic portrait of society.

Published by Kurt Wolff Verlag in 1929 with an introduction by the writer Alfred Döblin, Face of Our Time established an important model for presenting a photographic portrait of society in book form. The carefully structured sequence of 60 portraits transformed individual photographs into a collective social image and made the photobook itself an essential part of Sander’s artistic concept. This relationship between individual portrait, sequence, and society provides an important historical reference for Thomas Kellner’s Facets of the City.

Nearly a century separates Face of Our Time and Facets of the City, yet both publications use a sequence of 60 individual portraits to explore how society can be represented through photography. Sander’s selection emerged from a typological project shaped by the social structures of the early twentieth century, while Kellner’s selection derives from a visual microcensus based on demographic data from contemporary Siegen. The comparison of the two books reveals both continuity and change in the photographic representation of society across almost one hundred years.

Thomas Kellner – Facets of the City after August Sander
October 15 – November 16, 2025
National Museum of Fine Art, Chisinau, Republic of Moldova

Thomas Kellner – Facets of the City
April 21 – June 15, 2024
Art Galerie, Siegen, Germany

Monographs

Seltmann, Oliver, ed. 2025. Thomas Kellner. Facetten Der Großstadt Nach August Sander / Thomas Kellner. Facets of the City After August Sander. Berlin: Seltmann Publishers.

Exhibition catalogues 

Kunstverein Rosenheim e. V., ed. 2026. Kunstverein Rosenheim Kunst Aktuell 2026 Sonderausstellung Sebastian Tröger. Rosenheim.

Essays 

Dr. Thomas Meyer. 2025. “August Sander: Sozialforschung Mit Der Kamera / Social Studies with the Camera.” In Thomas Kellner. Facetten Der Großstadt Nach August Sander / Thomas Kellner. Facets of the City After August Sander, edited by Oliver Seltmann, 8–25. Berlin: Seltmann Publishers.

Neumüller, Moritz. 2025. “Menschenspiegel Mit Sollbruchstellen / a Mirror of Humanity with Structural Fault Lines.” In Thomas Kellner. Facetten Der Großstadt Nach August Sander / Thomas Kellner. Facets of the City After August Sander, edited by Oliver Seltmann, 26–47. Berlin: Seltmann Publishers.

Strunk, Noa-Kristin. 2025. “Zwischen Beständigkeit Und Wandel: Die Facetten Von Thomas Kellners Werken / Between Constancy and Change: The Facets of Thomas Kellner's Works.” In Thomas Kellner. Facetten Der Großstadt Nach August Sander / Thomas Kellner. Facets of the City After August Sander, edited by Oliver Seltmann, 174–81. Berlin: Seltmann Publishers.

Newspaper articles 

Adam, Florian. 2025. “Siegen: Diese Neue Bürgermeisterin Gibt Es Gar Nicht.” Westfalenpost, August 20, 2025. www.wp.de/lokales/siegen-und-umland/article409791964/siegen-diese-neue-buergermeisterin-gibt-es-gar-nicht.html.

Pirker, Daniel-D. 2025. “Künstliche Intelligenz Übernimmt: Siegen Präsentiert Die Erste KI-Bürgermeisterin.” Accessed August 22, 2025. www.ak-kurier.de/akkurier/www/artikel/160063-kuenstliche-intelligenz-uebernimmt--siegen-praesentiert-die-erste-ki-buergermeisterin.

Schulz, Hendrik. 2023. “Gesucht: 1000 Siegener Für Riesiges Foto-Projekt: Thomas Kellner Portraitiert Für "Facetten Der Großstadt" Ein Prozent Der Bevölkerung.” Westfalenpost, December 22, 2023. Nr. 297 / 51. Woche.

Schulz, Hendrik. 2025. “Fotograf Zeigt Facetten Von Arbeit Und Leben: Thomas Kellner Sucht Noch Rund 400 Modelle Für Porträtaufnahmen. Werke Werden Teil Einer Ausstellung.” Westfalenpost, May 24, 2025. Nr. 120.

Schwab, Steffen. 2025. “Siegen: Diese Neue Bürgermeisterin Gibt Es Gar Nicht.” Westfalenpost, August 20, 2025. web.archive.org/web/20250822145522/https://www.wp.de/lokales/siegen-und-umland/article409791964/siegen-diese-neue-buergermeisterin-gibt-es-gar-nicht.html.

TV

Primavesi, Mateo. 2024. Ausstellung: Auswahl Von Werken Eines Fotokünstlers. O1 Aktuell. Oldenburg, 2024. youtu.be/wJFmVZh21OI.

Radio

Federhenn, Marco, writer. 3nach10, “Laßt Uns Reden.” Aired May 19, 2025, on Radio Siegen.

Schirmer, Tom und Bald, Paul, writer, “KI – Künstliche Intelligenz: KI Bürgermeisterin Bei Facetten Der Großstadt.” Aired September 2, 2025, on Radio Siegen.

Online Publications 

Deutsche Gesellschaft für Photographie e.V. 2025. “Thomas Kellner- Facetten Der Großstadt Nach August Sander.” Accessed December 28, 2025. www.dgph.de/ausstellungen/thomas-kellner-facetten-der-grossstadt-nach-august-sander.

Freudenstein, Manuel. 2025. “»Dein Gesicht Zählt« Landrat Andreas Müller Unterstützt Kunstprojekt Von Thomas Kellner.” Accessed December 27, 2025. www.siegen-wittgenstein.de/Kreisverwaltung/Aktuelles/Pressemeldungen/-Dein-Gesicht-z%C3%A4hlt-Landrat-Andreas-M%C3%BCller-unterst%C3%BCtzt-Kunstprojekt-von-Thomas-Kellner.php.

Klein, Hendrik. 2025. “Dein Gesicht Zählt.” web.archive.org/save/https://www.mk-journal.de/index.php/2025/07/31/dein-gesicht-zaehlt/.

Schulz, Hendrik. 2023. “1000 Siegener Gesucht: Fotokünstler Portraitiert Menschen Wie „Du Und Ich“.” Westfalenpost, December 21, 2023. web.archive.org/web/20231226175645/https://www.wp.de/staedte/siegerland/siegen-beeindruckende-fotos-von-1000-ganz-normalen-leuten-id240842844.html.

Ullrich, Maren. 2024. “Thomas Kellner. Sights.” Accessed January 19, 2026. web.archive.org/web/20260119073032/https://termine.weser-kurier.de/einzeltermin?pk=67038299-2.

 

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