Evelyn Hofer

Evelyn Hofer was a highly innovative photographer whose prolific career spanned five decades. Despite her extraordinary output, she was underrecognized during her lifetime and was notably referred to by New York Times art critic Hilton Kramer as “the most famous unknown photographer in America.” She made her greatest impact through a series of photobooks, published throughout the 1960s, devoted to European and American cities, including Florence, London, New York, Washington and Dublin, and a book focused on the country of Spain.
Comprising more than 100 photographs in both black and white and color, Eyes on the City accompanies the artist’s first major museum exhibition in the United States in over 50 years and is organized around her photobooks. The photographs feature landscapes and architectural views combined with portraiture, conveying the unique character and personality of these urban capitals during a period of intense structural, social and economic transformations after World War II.
Evelyn Hofer (1922–2009) was born in Germany and moved to New York in 1946. She was an early adopter of color photography and published assignments for many major magazines including Vogue and Harper's Bazaar. Hofer collaborated with authors such as Mary McCarthy and V.S. Pritchett on several books, including The Stones of Florence (1959), London Perceived (1962) and Dublin: A Portrait (1967). She died in Mexico City.

The starting point for this book is Evelyn Hofer’s Dublin: A Portrait, which enjoyed great popularity upon its original publication in 1967, and featured an in-depth essay by the well-known British critic and memoirist V.S. Pritchett. Dublin: A Portrait is an example of Evelyn Hofer’s (1922–2009) perhaps most important body of work, namely her city portraits—books that present comprehensive prose texts by renowned authors alongside her self-contained visual essays with their own narratives. Dublin: A Portrait was the last book published in this legendary series.

This newly conceived edition of Dublin focuses on the photos Hofer took on behalf of the publisher Harper & Row in 1965 and 1966. In Dublin Hofer repeatedly turned her camera to sights of the city, but mainly to the people who constituted its essence. She made numerous portraits—of writers and public figures, or unknown people in the streets. Her portraits give evidence of an intense, respectful engagement with her subjects, who participate as equal partners in the process of photographing.

German-American photographer Evelyn Hofer (1922–2009) routinely spent several months in the cities she photographed for her books of the 1950s and ’60s, published with renowned authors such as Mary McCarthy and V.S. Pritchett. In titles such as New York Proclaimed (1965) and Dublin, A Portrait (1967), Hofer combines portraiture, city and country views, still lifes and larger interior shots to create complex images of these metropolises.

From this perspective, Begegnungen / Encounters explores the idea of the “portrait” throughout Hofer’s oeuvre, in series on New York, Dublin and Washington; images of artists and their studios; selected photo-essays for magazines; the extended projects People of Soglio and Basque People; as well as previously unseen New York photos of Marlene Dietrich’s home and Andy Warhol’s Factory.

S. Pritchett and photos by Evelyn Hofer (1922–2009), and which enjoyed great popularity upon its original publication. New York Proclaimed is an example of Hofer’s perhaps most important body of work, her city portrait collections: books that present comprehensive prose texts by renowned authors alongside her self-contained visual essays with their own narratives.

This newly conceived New York focuses on Hofer’s photos of the 1960s as well as previously unpublished images from the early 1970s. In Hofer’s photos of the street and (semi-) public spaces, people and architecture become symbols of a particular time and place.

New York contains a new essay by John Haskell that posits possible stories behind Hofer’s photos and draws connections between images taken over the course of ten years.