Evelyn Hofer

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Evelyn Hofer (born January 21, 1922 , Marburg an der Lahn ; † November 2, 2009 in Mexico City ) was a German-born photographer who later took on both Mexican and American citizenship. Over the decades, Hofer created a work that independently further developed the tradition of August Sander's image conception and also anticipated the color photography of William Eggleston . Hilton Kramer , art critic for the New York Times, described Hofer as "America's most famous 'unknown' photographer".

Life

Evelyn Hofer left Germany in 1933 with her democratically minded parents Gustav and Elvira Schünemann-Hofer and their older sister Aline. They lived alternately in Switzerland and Spain. From 1935 Hofer attended the international school in Geneva. After the early decision to become a photographer, she received lessons from Hilmar Lokay and from Robert Spreng in Basel and private lessons from Hans Finsler in Zurich ; In addition, she did an apprenticeship in a photo studio in Zurich.

In 1942 Hofer emigrated with her family to Mexico. In 1946 she went alone to New York City to devote herself to photography, while her family stayed in Mexico City permanently . In New York followed orders in the field of fashion photography from Alexey Brodovitch for Harper's Bazaar , she photographed a. a. also for Vogue . Hofer became friends with Richard Lindner , René Boucher , Saul Steinberg and Hans Namuth and from 1977 was represented in the gallery of Lee Witkin , who introduced her work to the art market.

In addition to technical aspects and working in the darkroom, Evelyn Hofer also dealt with art-theoretical and photo-aesthetic aspects, which ultimately resulted in her characteristic photography. In the 1950s she was one of the first photographers to introduce color into her photographic work; Hofer turned to the technique of relief printing early on. During her entire creative period, she photographed both in color and in black and white - depending on what the individual motif required in the respective situation.

She moved from New York to her sister in Mexico City in 2005, where she died in 2009 at the age of 87.

plant

Hofer's early career took a significant turn in the mid-1950s when Mary McCarthy hired her to create photographs for The Stones of Florence (published in New York in 1959), a literary exploration of the history and culture of the Tuscan city. Over the following decades, Hofer worked with authors such as VS Pritchett , William Walton , James Morris and Evelyn Barish and photographed for books on London ( London Perceived , 1962), Spain ( The Presence of Spain , 1964), New York City ( New York Proclaimed , 1965), Washington DC ( The Evidence of Washington , 1966), Dublin ( Dublin. A Portrait , 1967) and Paris (1967, not published in book form) and most recently Emerson in Italy (1989).

Hofer took photos with a 4 × 5 inch large format camera. She researched extensively for the respective order; she first explored and observed the respective location for a long time, allowing the light and atmosphere to take effect, before reaching for the camera and photographing what she subjectively captured. Hofer photographed people and places as she found them, looking for a timeless aura. Regardless of a snapshot aesthetic such as that popularized by Eggleston or William Klein , classic criteria are central to Hofer's work. Her approach is characterized by a slowdown: Hofer wanted to look behind the façades in order to grasp the essentials in her work. It aimed to create a subjective interpretation of the world beyond a purely documentary moment, which unites both the zeitgeist and a certain timelessness. As a street photographer of a different kind, her photographs convey her interest in social aspects and open up a pointed view of society - her intimate and always dignified portraits depict the possibilities and limits of human well-being.

Her social and societal essays for magazines such as Life , the London Times Magazine and the New York Times Magazine follow: For example, her works include Just Married ( Life , 1974), Scene of the Crime ( The London Sunday Times , 1974), The Long Stretch ( The London Sunday Times , 1975), Toys, Trivets and Serving Trays ( The New York Times Magazine , 1976) and The Members of a Wedding ( Life , 1977) and Homecoming for the Pope ( The New York Times Magazine , 1979) Contemporary and Social History.

In addition to the city portraits and essays for magazines, Hofer's photographic work is diverse: In addition to architecture and landscape, she also turned to still lifes in a large number of photographs of interiors and portraits, as well as in her late work. Her best-known interiors for Condé Nast publications such as Vogue , Vanity Fair and House and Garden include recordings of the Maison de verre (Paris, 1982), the Villa Medici (Rome, 1982) and Jackson Pollock's studio (Long Island, 1988) .

In addition to portraits of Artur Rubinstein , Ted Kennedy , Joseph Brodsky , Alec Guinness and Luis Barragan , she took numerous photos of visual artists, sometimes several times, in their studios and apartments, such as Andy Warhol , Balthus , Georg Baselitz , Jean-Michel Basquiat , also Roy Lichtenstein , Ed Ruscha , Julian Schnabel and George Segal as well as Saul Steinberg . In addition to these portraits of famous personalities and primarily visual artists, Hofer also dedicated extensive series of portraits to unknown people with People of Soglio (1990–1991) and Basque People (1980), which he commissioned himself .

Hofer's late work, Still Life, was created in the mid-1990s in her long-standing New York studio in the Westbeth Artists Community in the West Village of Manhattan , where Diane Arbus also lived for a while. The arranged vessels and fruits in front of a velvety dark background are reminiscent of 17th-century still life painting, such as Francisco de Zurbarán's works , in terms of their composition and their tactile quality .

Quotes from Evelyn Hofer

“I hope none of my portraits look posed. That's the difficulty with portraits - not making them look posed. I think that's what happens when you watch people long before you start recording and then lead them back to something you saw. "

“One reason I like working with a big camera is because I don't like spying on someone. I want them to know that I'm taking a picture of them and I want them to work with me. If they felt that I was trying to get something out of them that they really didn't want, it would be impossible. So I respect them and I want them to respect what we do together. "

“While I was working on my Dublin book, I found that a lot of people were shy and reluctant to be photographed. Therefore, I only wanted to meet with the respective person first to talk, to gain their trust and to give them the freedom to take the portrait where they liked it most. "

"In reality, everything we photograph is ourselves in the other ... all the time."

Photographic heritage

The photographic estate of Evelyn Hofer is managed by Andreas Pauly, a longstanding assistant to the photographer.

Publications (selection)

  • The Pleasures of Mexico, text by Maurice Sandoz, Kamin Publishers, New York 1957
  • The Stones of Florence, text by Mary McCarthy, Harcourt, Brace & World, London 1956
  • London Perceived, text by VS Pritchett, Harcourt, Brace & World Inc., New York 1962
  • The Presence of Spain, text by James Morris, Harcourt, Brace & World Inc., New York 1964
  • New York Proclaimed, text by VS Pritchett, Harcourt, Brace & World Inc., New York 1965
  • The Evidence of Washington, text by William Walton, Bodley Head: London 1966
  • Dublin. A portrait, text by VS Pritchett, Harper & Row, New York 1967
  • Emerson in Italy, text by Ralph Waldo Emerson and Evelyn Barish, Henry Holt and Company, New York 1989

Exhibitions (selection)

  • 1977: Photographs, Witkin Gallery, New York
  • 1982: Photographs, Black & White and Color, Witkin Gallery, New York
  • 1987: FRIDA !, Mexican Museum, San Francisco
  • 1987: Art Circles: Portrait Photographs from ArtNews 1905–1986, International Center of Photography , New York
  • 1988: Emerson in Italy, Witkin Gallery, New York
  • 1989: Water, Pfizer Corporation, New York
  • 1991/1992: The People of Soglio, Witkin Gallery, New York
  • 1994: Evelyn Hofer: Photographs, Musée de l'Elysée , Lausanne
  • 2001: Evelyn Hofer, Galerie m Bochum
  • 2001: Overnight to Many Cities, 303 Gallery, New York
  • 2001/2002: The Nature of Still Life, Galleria d'Arte Moderna, Bologna
  • 2002/2003: rooms of the XX. Century II, Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin
  • 2004: Portrait, Kunsthalle Erfurt
  • 2004: Evelyn Hofer: Photographs since 1950, Aargauer Kunsthaus , Aarau
  • 2005: Evelyn Hofer: Ewigkeit im moment, C / O Berlin
  • 2005: Evelyn Hofer, Peter Blum Gallery, New York
  • 2006/2007: Shelter - Art for women forced into prostitution, Neue Nationalgalerie , Berlin
  • 2007: Evelyn Hofer, Galerie m Bochum
  • 2007: Things, art collections of the Ruhr University, Bochum
  • 2008: Evelyn Hofer, Kunstverein Ulm
  • 2008: From Art and Politics, Art Space of the German Bundestag, Berlin
  • 2011: worldviews. Landscape in Art from the 17th to the 21st Century, Kunsthalle Kiel
  • 2015: Evelyn Hofer (1922–2009) - retrospective, Museum Villa Stuck , Munich

Works in collections (selection)

Literature (selection)

  • Andrea Henkens: Hofer, Evelyn . In: General Artist Lexicon . The visual artists of all times and peoples (AKL). Volume 74, de Gruyter, Berlin 2012, ISBN 978-3-11-023179-3 , p. 59.
  • Susan E. Meyer, Evelyn Hofer. Pilgrim with a Lens, in: American Artist, Vol. 34, Nov. 1970, pp. 46-52, 74-75
  • Hilton Kramer, Enduring Images. The Photographic World of Evelyn Hofer, in: New York Times Magazine, January 31, 1982, Vol. 131, pp. 39-43, 77
  • Annamaria Nunzi and Peter Cadisch: Evelyn Hofer. Slowness photographer, in: You. Das Kulturmagazin , April 2013, vol. 73, no. 835, pp. 62–69
  • Thomas David: A piece from the soul , in: art, H. 8 (August 2002), pp. 77–85
  • Evelyn Hofer , ed. by Susanne Breidenbach, Steidl, Göttingen 2004
  • Isabelle Haffter: Evelyn Hofer: "The most famous 'unknown' photographer in America" . In: Photo Story , Issue 139/2016 ( online )
  • Boris Friedewald: Masters of Light. Great women photographers from two centuries , Munich, Hatje Cantz Verlag 2014, 978-3-7913-4673-1. About Evelyn Hofer: p. 90
Exhibition catalogs
  • Evelyn Hofer. Photographs , Musée de l'Élysée , Lausanne 1994
  • Street Lifes and Home Stories , Museum Villa Stuck Munich, Hatje Cantz Verlag, Ostfildern 2011
  • Evelyn Hofer (1922–2009) - retrospective , ed. by Michael Buhrs and Sabine Schmid in collaboration with Andreas Pauly, exhibition of the Museum Villa Stuck, Steidl, Göttingen 2015

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Evelyn Hofer. Biography. danzigergallery.com, accessed October 21, 2015.
  2. ↑ New York Times Blog, Evelyn Hofer, Reconsidered, April 30, 2012 , accessed October 21, 2015.
  3. ↑ Evelyn Hofer ( Memento of the original from November 17, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. fotostiftung.ch, accessed on October 21, 2015. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.fotostiftung.ch
  4. ↑ New York Times Blog, Evelyn Hofer's New York, June 2, 2012 , accessed October 21, 2015.
  5. ↑ [1] , accessed on October 21, 2015.
  6. ↑ [2] , accessed on October 21, 2015.
  7. ↑ Donald Goddard: Evelyn Hofer: Still Lifes. newyorkartworld.com, accessed October 21, 2015.
  8. ↑ Evelyn Hofer about Evelyn Hofer, in: Evelyn Hofer, ed. by Susanne Breidenbach, Steidl, Göttingen 2004, p. 175.
  9. ↑ Evelyn Hofer about Evelyn Hofer, in: Evelyn Hofer, ed. by Susanne Breidenbach, Steidl, Göttingen 2004, p. 175.
  10. ↑ Evelyn Hofer about Evelyn Hofer, in: Evelyn Hofer, ed. by Susanne Breidenbach, Steidl, Göttingen 2004, p. 177.
  11. ↑ Evelyn Hofer about Evelyn Hofer, in: Evelyn Hofer, ed. by Susanne Breidenbach, Steidl, Göttingen 2004, p. 178.
personal data
SURNAME Hofer, Evelyn
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Mexican-British photographer
DATE OF BIRTH January 21, 1922
PLACE OF BIRTH Marburg
DATE OF DEATH November 2, 2009
Place of death Mexico city