At a time when photography was going gonzo – when people were hunting out action, shooting from the hip – Evelyn Hofer turned the other way. The German-American photographer had a quieter, more formal, composed approach.
She took her large format camera and her long exposures onto the streets of Paris, London and New York. There are cheeky scamps in 1960s Battersea, an aloof waiter at The Garrick, warehousemen and lorry drivers, Barcelona street sellers and kids playing in a Parisian square. Her sitters look right out at you, concentrated, placid, intense. She didn't sneak secret photos like so many ethically dubious photographers who came after her, she collaborated with the people she found interesting, worked with them to create intimate visual dialogs.
They’re lovely, neat, thoughtful images for the most part. But it’s when the humans are absent, or at least faceless, that her work feels the most special. Her cityscapes and interiors are so perfectly composed, so dramatic, so quietly grand. They’re like a long, slow single chord, a huge sweeping sound, a deep intake of breath. Trinity College’s library sucks you into its vanishing perspective, a street in New York is immense and empty, Park Avenue is stark and striated, motorways are shockingly twisted. You can see in these vast landscapes and tiny interiors the birth of modern giants like Thomas Struth and Andreas Gursky, it’s all the vast drama of the constructed world.
This is slow, considered and careful photography that can be small and intimate or big and overwhelming, but always tenderly human.
