E. O. Hoppé

In this film, photo-curator Graham Howe tells FotoTV a wonderfully interesting story about renowned photographer E.O. Hoppé, and how by chance Howe discovered the stored archives of Hoppé's brilliant work. Howe's story begins in London in 1972, where he met photo-historian Bill Jay. Jay had recently completed and oral history project on E.O. Hoppé, and names Hoppé “The most famous photographer in the world, in 1920.” Howe was surprised, because as an art student, he knew photographers such as, Stieglitz, Steichen, and Strand to be the famous photographers of the 1920s. Although ignited with curiosity, Howe would not learn more about Hoppé until a chance meeting twenty years later with Michael Hoppé, E.O. Hoppé’s grandson. That meeting provided him with further contacts, which led him to a London stock agency, where a large amount of Hoppé’s photographic work was archived. Amongst the exquisite work, Howe found an incredibly rare photograph of 42nd St. in New York City, dated 1921 and signed by E.O. Hoppé. It was on this day of discovery that Howe realized, it was the American photographers who were noted as being the best modernists of that era, but actually there was also Hoppé, a European who was just as good if not better than the master photographers the world up until this point knew of. Howe spent another ten years, locating and researching the archives of E.O. Hoppé, a total of about 100,000 images. An incredible amount of time was spent organizing, cataloging, and reassembling the images. It was now clear to Howe why Hoppé went unaccredited as one of the most important modernists of the blue chip era of photography for so long, because Hoppé sold his entire archive to a stock agency in 1952. The agency did not syndicate his work, thus making his work unavailable and largely unknown on the market for many years, including the years where his contemporaries received accolades for their work of the 1920s. Howe is currently working on a collection of 12 photo-books, with themes of portraiture, landscape, and dance, of Hoppé’s work. In addition, upcoming Hoppé exhibitions are, “The German Work: 1925-1938”, at the Berlinische Gallerie in Berlin, Germany, November 2010, and “The English: 1912-1950”, at the National Portrait Gallery in London, in March 2011