A close-up view of everyday people

Thirty-four portraits from “People of the 20th Century’’ are on display at Gallery Kayafas through Jan. 16. They’ve been printed from Sander’s original negatives by his grandson Gerd, who oversees the August Sander Archive.

Two of the portraits, “Bricklayer’’ and “Young Farmers’’ (also known as “Three Farmers on Their Way to a Dance’’), are among the most famous images of the century, and deservedly so. “Painter’s Wife’’ and “Painter’’ - who had that awful haircut first, the painter or Brecht? - aren’t far behind. Each exemplifies the single most remarkable thing about this remarkable body of work. Sander’s images manage to convey both universality and an utter specificity of time and place (note the dueling scars of “Fraternity Student,’’ for example, or each sitter’s supersized mustachios in “Master Shoemaker’’ and “Police Officer’’).

As such titles might indicate, there’s something vaguely medieval about Sander’s conception: a reliance on guild and hierarchy at the expense of individualism and personality. He broke down humanity into seven categories: “The Farmer,’’ “The Skilled Tradesman,’’ “The Woman,’’ and so on. The magnificence of Sander’s undertaking, along with the probity, seriousness, and sheer Germanic diligence with which he undertook it, helps obscure just how mad the project was.

Anyone who sees all humanity as falling into types must needs hold a fundamentally static view of existence. Not surprisingly, then, there’s an abiding sense of stasis in these pictures, a kind of gravity that owes as much to morality as physics. Jules Aarons’s work, in contrast, is a marvel of liveliness. That contrast in energy, as well as a comparably humane outlook, makes the 23 photographs that make up “Jules Aarons: V’Natanu’’ an apt pairing with Sander here.