Absence of Subject: The Images of Michael Somoroff and August Sander

"Michael Somoroff’s project Absence of Subject, began as a way to reconsider August Sander’s life’s work, People of the 20th Century, a typeology of the human race begun in 1911.

In making the work Somoroff questioned his own connections to Sander’s subjects.  By removing these enigmatic figures, he explores these questions, which involve an overpowering sense of familiarity. By removing the subjects he reveals the fragility of mortality.

Beginning in 2000, it took seven months to complete the first image and seven years to ‘excavated’ the subjects from 40 of Sander’s most iconic images.

He found that instead of absence, what emerged were the subconscious workings of the artist’s mind, buried deep within the photographs; elements that would later become abstract expressionism and other new ways of seeing that were just beginning to develop at the time.

At its base Absence of Subject is an exercise in appropriation – but more astonishingly it stands as an archeological document that reflects both the development of art in the 20th century and its influence on August Sander as an artist.

---Peggy Sue Amison, Curator"