Die Photographische Sammlung/SK Stiftung Kultur in Cologne presents a major exhibition of British photogtrapher Emil Otto Hoppé and his industrial photographs from the 1920s and 30s.
German-born, British photographer Emil Otto Hoppé (1878-1972) was one of the most important art and documentary photographers of the modern era, he was also one of the most renowned portrait photographers of his day, as well as a brilliant landscape and travel photographer. In the twenties and thirties, Hoppé set out to depict the romance of global industrial might. Travelling throughout Germany, Britain, the United States, India, Australia, among other countries he photographed the brave new technological landscape of industry, seeing its gargantuan machines as both technology and art. Emil Otto Hoppé: Unveiling a Secret presents for the first time Hoppé’s iconic industrial images of the modern era, a subject he approached with formal idealism only to discover also a darker landscape within: the preparation of machines and weapons that were part of the technology used in the second world war.
How is it that such a major figure in photography can today be less well known than those who acknowledge his giant stature in photographic art? The answer lies in a simple misstep of fate. In 1954, well before most of the photographic histories were written, Hoppé was nearing the end of his long and illustrious career. At age 76 he decided to sell five decades of his photographic work to a London picture library. Here, after being filed by subject in with millions of other “stock” pictures the Hoppé photographs were no longer accessible by author. Most of all of Hoppé’s photographic work—that which gained him the reputation as Britain’s most influential international photographer between 1907 and 1939—was literally entombed. To finally be extracted from the London picture library in the mid-1990s.
Urs Stahel
Urs Stahel is a curator in photography and the founder of Fotomuseum Winterthur in Winterthur, Switzerland.
Emil Otto Hoppé, Unveiling a Secret
April 6 – July 30, 2017
Die Photographische Sammlung/SK Stiftung Kultur
Im Mediapark 7
50670 Cologne
Germany
