"You have in front of you a kind of cultural history, better sociology of the last thirty years. How to write sociology without writing, but presenting photographs instead, photographs of faces and not national costumes, this is what the photographer accomplished with his eyes, his mind, his observation, his knowledge and last but not least his considerable photographic ability. Only though studying comparative anatomy can we come to an understanding of nature and the history of the internal organs. In the same way this photographer has practised comparative photography and therefore found a scientific point of view beyond the conventional photographer."

Alfred Döblin, 1929