NYAB Event - "Hoppé’s Amerika" Exhibition

"Hoppé’s Amerika" Exhibition

Bruce Silverstein

This event has ended.

Silverstein Photography presents to E. O. Hoppé’s Amerika, an exhibition of rare and previously unknown vintage photographs taken by the German-born British photographer during his travels around the United States in the 1920s. This groundbreaking exhibition, the first in the United States of the photographer’s work in over 80 years, places the newly rediscovered photographer squarely at the origins of Modernist photography, and provides evidence of his influence on such notable American artists as Walker Evans, Charles Sheeler, Edward Weston and Ansel Adams. At the time of his arrival in America in 1919, months after the First World War ended, Emil Otto Hoppé (1878 – 1972) was arguably the most famous photographer in the world. Countless celebrities visited his studios in London, including royalty, literary figures, dancers, and film stars. Lured to New York to set up a satellite studio, Hoppé quickly fell in love with the people and places of the United States. He began by photographing homeless men in the Bowery, and continued by taking breathtaking views of architectural landmarks such as the Brooklyn Bridge and Grand Central Station. When the publisher Orbis Terrarum commissioned him to photograph the entire United States, he eagerly accepted, criss-crossing the country by car and rail. He spent nearly five years photographing all over America, from New Hampshire to the Florida Keys, and from Seattle to San Diego.