| | | | | | | | E.O. Hoppé: Skeleton of Graf Zeppelin, Friedrichshafen, 1928
© 2017 Curatorial Assistance, Inc. / E.O. Hoppé Estate Collection | | | | | | An exhibition in collaboration with the Fondazione MAST, Bologna, and the E. O. Hoppé Estate Collection/Curatorial Assistance, California, curated by Urs Stahel | | | A Look at the Collection: Industry as a Motif | | | | | | | 6 April – 30 July, 2017 | | | Opening receptions: Wednesday, 5 April, 7pm
The focus of the two new exhibitions at Die Photographische Sammlung/SK Stiftung Kultur is industrial photography with its various contexts of origin, its formal-aesthetic positing, and its content-related implications. | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
| | | | | | | | | | | | | E.O. Hoppé: Rendezvous at the London Stock Exchange, England, 1937
© 2017 Curatorial Assistance, Inc. / E.O. Hoppé Estate Collection | | | | | | | | An exhibition in collaboration with the Fondazione MAST, Bologna, and the E. O. Hoppé Estate Collection/Curatorial Assistance, California, curated by Urs Stahel | | | | 6 April – 30 July, 2017 | | | | Emil Otto Hoppé (*1878 in Munich) - his name is often abbreviated as "E. O. Hoppé" - was a prominent portrait photographer of the early 20th century. He also gained a great deal of attention for his landscape, architectural, and industrial photography, which he published along with his portraits in newspapers, magazines, and books. However, his name began to increasingly disappear from public focus beginning in the 1950s. This was primarily due to the fact that in 1954, he gave the major share of his creative photographic work to a London picture library, which did not sort its collection according to the name of the author but above all by sets of motifs, leading to the disintegration, so to speak, of his diverse body of work. | | | | | | | | | E.O. Hoppé: Rotary Kilns Under Construction in the Boiler Shop,
Vickers-Armstrongs Steel Foundry, Tyneside, England, 1928
© 2017 Curatorial Assistance, Inc. / E.O. Hoppé Estate Collection | | | | | | It was not until the 1990s that, emanating from the United States, his oeuvre began to experience greater reception. With the involvement of Curatorial Assistance, Inc., in Pasadena, his photographs were again singled out of the library collection and transferred to the E. O. Hoppé Estate Collection, which is now based in Pasadena, California. It houses the extensive collection of vintage prints, negatives, and publications. Moreover, it initiates exhibitions on various areas of the photographer's body of work and facilitates publications and other concerns.
E.O. Hoppé began his photographic career in London, where he had moved in 1902 and where he ran a successful portrait studio beginning in 1907. In the 1920s and '30s Hoppé made numerous, in part months-long journeys to different countries in Europe, even travelling as far as America, India, and Australia, producing extensive documentations during his stays there. He was interested in people, landscapes, settlements, and cities as well as industrial aspects.
Beginning in 1925, Hoppé frequently sojourned in Germany and Austria. He began focusing more and more on industry and technology, a subject area that at the time in general enjoyed a great deal of attention among artists and photographers. He documented, for example, hydroelectric power plants in southern Germany, surface mines near Berlin, the pits and steel mills in the Ruhr district with their impressive structures and smoking chimneys. He took a look into plants, workshops, and details of individual constructions, even including portraits of workers and employees. Hoppé documented the infrastructure that was so important for industry, such as railroads, ports, and wharfs; streets and bridges, as well as flying machines such as zeppelins and airplanes, in impressive photographs. In terms of his style, he approaches a modernist imagery with strong contrasts, dynamic views from above and below, and shifts in perspectives. E. O. Hoppé provided a wide-ranging presentation of the subject of industry in the publication Deutsche Arbeit (German Work; Ullstein Verlag, 1930). | | | | | | | | | E.O. Hoppé: Bridge and Carriage, Philadelphia, USA, 1926
© 2017 Curatorial Assistance, Inc. / E.O. Hoppé Estate Collection | | | | | | | The fact that the photographer pursued the subject beyond Germany becomes apparent, for instance, through the photograph of the very imposing Harbour Bridge in Sydney, taken in 1930 while it was still under construction, one of the widest steel bridges in the world. Hoppé took photographs of the cranes in the shipyard of Liverpool in his adopted country of England; in Nottingham he shot pictures of a machine for the manufacture of aspirin; and in Northamptonshire he photographed a telephone pole as testimony to modern communication. He also took a portrait of the banker Alfred de Rothschild. During his extended travels through America, E. O. Hoppé visited the Ford plant in Detroit in 1926; in 1929 he took pictures of the Tata steel mills in Jamshedpur; and in Calcutta he sought out a jute mill. Hoppé's images were primarily included in the illustrated travel books on individual themes and regions that were very popular at the time. However, he not only acted as a photographer, but also wrote articles, for example for the publication Das romantische Amerika (Romantic America) from 1927. | | | | | | | | | E.O. Hoppé: Ford Factory, Detroit, Michigan, USA, 1926
© 2017 Curatorial Assistance, Inc. / E.O. Hoppé Estate Collection | | | | | | | The current exhibition throws light on Hoppé's enormous creative photographic process, especially on the multifaceted range of industrial motifs. The selection of images and their sequencing carried out by the Swiss curator Urs Stahel makes Hoppé's great passion for these motifs palpable. With this substantial area of subjects, the photographer examined various techniques and stylistic devices, both traditional as well as ambitious, striving for modernity. E. O. Hoppé thus succeeded in making a pioneering contribution to the history of photography, lending him an exceptional and new profile. | | | | | | |
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | August Sander: Hohenzollernbrücke, Cologne, 1927
© Rheinisches Bildarchiv Köln, 2017 | | | | | A Look at the Collection: Industry as a Motif | | | | | | | 6 April – 30 July, 2017 | | | | Opening reception: Wednesday, 5 April, 7pm | | | | | | | | | Peter Weller: Marienhütte Eiserfeld/Sieg, 1909-1914/2002
Courtesy Die Photographische Sammlung/SK Stiftung Kultur, Köln/Siegerländer Heimat- und Geschichtsverein e. V., Siegen | | | | | | | Industrial depiction plays an important role in the collection of Die Photographische Sammlung/SK Stiftung Kultur. A selection of groups of works on the subject will be presented in the group exhibition that reflects the period from the late 19th century to the 1990s. In keeping with technological progress and developments in the area of artistic photography, light will be thrown on a wide range of aspects. | | | | | | | | | Bernd und Hilla Becher: Water tower, Zeche Wolfsbank, Essen-Borbeck, Ruhrgebiet, 1965
© Estate Bernd & Hilla Becher, 2017 | | | | | | | While Peter Weller, who stems from the Westerwald, approached the iron and steel works in the Siegerland under landscape-related, architectural points of view in the late 19th century, in many of her commissioned works for heavy industry Ruth Hallensleben documented key factories, including social institutions. August Sander's little-known portfolio Mensch und Maschine (Man and Machine) expands his typologically arranged portrait art by a reportage-like perspective. In the 1950s and '60s, industrial motifs were also increasingly included in experimental pictorial studies conducted by representatives of "subjective photography." | | | | | | | | | Joachim Brohm: Untitled (Serie Industriezeit), 1990
© Joachim Brohm; VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn, 2017 | | | | | | One photographic approach that was particularly relevant for and is exemplified by Bernd and Hilla Becher is the objective, conceptual documentation of entire facilities, in this case a mine. Claudia Fährenkemper's photographic series on the structure of a bucket-wheel excavator at the Hambach open-pit lignite mine falls into line with this very well in terms of style. Last but not least, Joachim Brohm's photographs from the Industriezeit (Industrial Era) series from 1990 present traces of and references to a past era in the Ruhr district that 100 years prior to that seemed to be firmly established and future-oriented.
A brochure will be published in conjunction with the exhibition. | | | | | | | | | Ruth Hallensleben: Zeche Nordstern, Gelsenkirchen-Horst, 1952–1954
© Ruth Hallensleben/Fotoarchiv Ruhr Museum, 2017 | | | | | | unsubscribe here
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