The Nose on Your Face: Faces and Souls in August Sander's Germany (lecture)

Date: Thursday, May 29, 2008
Time: 7:00 p.m.
Location: Getty Center, Harold M. Williams Auditorium
Admission: Free; reservations required. Call (310) 440-7300 or visit the Getty on the web at http://www.getty.edu/visit/events/gilman_lecture.html

Is the face truly a window onto the soul? Can we change ourselves by changing the appearance of our faces? Does our modern obsession with faces—from Botox to face transplants—have historical precedents?

Come learn about these topics from one of the world's authorities on identity, stereotyping, and the history of cosmetic surgery, Sander Gilman. Author of Making the Body Beautiful: A Cultural History of Aesthetic Surgery, Gilman traces our fascination with faces today back to the early 20th century, when German photographer August Sander set out to chronicle and catalogue the soul of his nation by taking pictures of social types and collecting these pictures into a collective portrait, which is the subject of the current exhibition August Sander: People of the Twentieth Century.

Find out more at the Getty's website