Berlin Coal Carrier

The photograph depicts a coal carrier from Berlin, emerging from the dark cellar of a building into the sunlight. The man of middle age and with a moustache, is of humble social condition, he wears a hat and is dressed poorly, with dirty and worn pants. He takes a step upward the door, while he carries on his left shoulder a wicker basket, presumably with coal. His appearance and profession put him at the lower ranks of the working class of the Weimar Republic. The J. Paul Getty Museum website states: "His place, Sander seems to suggest, is deep inside the bowels of German society — like the dark basement from which he emerges."^[2]

There are prints of this photograph at the August Sander Archive, in Cologne, the Museum of Modern Art, in New York, and the J. Paul Getty Museum, in Los Angeles.^[3][4]