Timeless portraits by ‘the most famous unknown photographer in America’

While pen­ning a glow­ing review of pho­tog­ra­ph­er Eve­lyn Hofer (1922 – 2009) for the New York Times in 1982, art crit­ic Hilton Kramer recog­nised that he was deal­ing with the work of ​“the most famous unknown pho­tog­ra­ph­er in America.”

Four decades lat­er, Hofer’s life and lega­cy are final­ly receiv­ing their prop­er due in her first UK solo exhi­bi­tion, Eve­lyn Hofer, now at The Pho­tog­ra­phers Gallery. Bring­ing togeth­er over 110 works, books, and ephemera made over 45 years, the show explores the Hofer’s mas­ter­ful use of the 4×5 view cam­era to cre­ate time­less por­traits, still lifes and land­scapes.

Hail­ing from Ger­many, Hofer’s fam­i­ly fled the Nazis in 1933, even­tu­al­ly set­tling in Mex­i­co City where the she began work­ing as a pro­fes­sion­al pho­tog­ra­ph­er. Seek­ing her for­tune, Hofer decamped for New York in 1946 and quick­ly became immersed in the city’s thriv­ing post-war art scene.

After get­ting her start at Harper’s Bazaar, Hofer dis­cov­ered her pas­sion for long-form work when she col­lab­o­rat­ed with nov­el­ist and activist Mary McCarthy on the 1959 trav­el book, The Stones of Flo­rence. 

​“What inter­est­ed her about Flo­rence was the aura of the eter­nal that emanat­ed from the ancient walls, which over time had become a silent wit­ness to his­to­ry,” says cura­tor and own­er of Galerie M, Susanne Brei­den­bach. ​“She blanked out the ele­ments of the ephemer­al, mod­ern world such as cars. In this way, her images cap­ture what remains over time. The search for the essen­tial, for that which is inher­ent in a thing or a per­son beyond the momen­tary, also char­ac­teris­es her lat­er photographs.”

No longer con­strict­ed by the lim­its of stu­dio pho­tog­ra­phy, Hofer immersed her­self in real life, embark­ing on a jour­ney that would take her around the world to cities like Paris, Wash­ing­ton, Dublin and Lon­don, as well as Spain and Italy. Unlike her con­tem­po­raries, Hofer pur­sued a ​“slow” approach that was more akin to paint­ing than the more pop­u­lar ​“point-and-shoot” tech­nique of the era.

“She did not exper­i­ment with chance or pho­to­graph from the hip like most pho­to­jour­nal­ists at the time. In fact, quite the oppo­site,” says Brei­den­bach. ​“She metic­u­lous­ly pre­pared the moment of the shot and pho­tographed exclu­sive­ly with a large-for­mat plate cam­era. She con­vert­ed her colour pho­tographs using the dye trans­fer noble print process, a pho­to­graph­ic tech­nique that is no longer avail­able today.”

Brei­den­bach points to Hofer’s all-embrac­ing care, which she brought to both the process and the sub­ject mat­ter at hand. Whether pho­tograph­ing gravedig­gers in Dublin, an inmate Parkhurst Prison, Andy Warhol at The Fac­to­ry, or the Joint Chiefs of Staff in Wash­ing­ton D.C., Hofer imbued a pro­found sense of beau­ty, dig­ni­ty and hon­our to all she encountered.

“Hofer was always inter­est­ed in the mean­ing of life and the role some­one played in it,” says Brei­den­bach. ​“She ruled out any form of manip­u­la­tion in her approach and instead strove for trans­paren­cy. Although Hofer­’s por­traits are deeply per­son­al, they nev­er expose. Rather, they show a deep respect for the subject.”

Eve­lyn Hofer is on show at The Pho­tog­ra­phers Gallery Lon­don until 24^th Sep­tem­ber 2023.

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