Evelyn Hofer Knihy

The starting point for this book is Evelyn Hofer’s Dublin: A Portrait, which features an in-depth essay by V. S. Pritchett and photos by Hofer, and enjoyed great popularity upon its original publication in 1967. Dublin: A Portrait is an example of Hofer’s perhaps most important body of work, 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 renowned series. The newly conceived 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—be they 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.

The starting point for Evelyn Hofer’s New York is the 1965 book New York Proclaimed, which features an in-depth essay by V. S. Pritchett and photos by Hofer, and enjoyed great popularity upon its original publication. New York Proclaimed is an example of Hofer’s perhaps most important body of work, her city portraits: books that present comprehensive prose texts by renowned authors alongside her self-contained visual essays with their own narratives. The newly conceived New York focuses on Hofer’s photos of the 1960s as well as until now unpublished images from the early 1970s.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. She immersed herself in New York society and captured these aspects of the everyday—inconspicuous and subtle, yet all the more enduring for being so—in images that invariably reflect the zeitgeist. New York contains a new essay by John Haskell which posits possible stories behind Hofer’s photos and draws connections between images taken over the course of ten years.

Evelyn Hofer has photographed famous contemporaries and ordinary people in the Basque region, and recently, this passionate portrait photographer has turned married couples and people on the street into her subjects. But Hofer can also wait patiently for hours until her frame contains no people at all. Then she adds the pure beauty of the countryside or a venerable old building to a stark and timeless composition. Throughout her long photographic career, Hofer has sought both motion and stillness and balanced and revealed these qualities through the most diverse moments. This extensive monograph on the varied facets of her life's work shows her warm-hearted and incorruptible look at people and their surroundings. Containing photographs from Florence, London, Spain, New York, Washington, Dublin and Paris, along with a wealth of portraits, landscapes and architectural photography, this book concludes with Hofer's most recently completed work, a series of picturesque still lifes.