America's most famous unknown photographer, as the "New York Times" once praised Evelyn Hofer, was actually a Hessian.

Hofer was born in the university town of Marburg on January 21, 1922 – almost a hundred years ago – but if today she is listed in biographies as either an American or a Mexican (she held both citizenships), this has changed with the times to do.

Christian Riethmuller

Editor in the Rhein-Main-Zeitung.

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When Hofer was still a child, her democratically minded parents decided in 1933 to leave Nazi Germany with their two daughters. In the years that followed, the family lived alternately in Spain and Switzerland, where Evelyn Hofer, who was enthusiastic about photography from an early age, not only attended the International School in Geneva, but also received private lessons from important Swiss photographers such as Robert Spreng and Hans Finsler before she after the Graduated from school and started an apprenticeship in a photo studio in Zurich.

When the Hofer family finally left Europe in 1942 and emigrated to Mexico City, the young Evelyn was not only familiar with the technical aspects of photography and working in the darkroom.

Last but not least, the confrontation with aesthetic questions allowed her to develop her own visual language, which stood in the tradition of August Sander's documentary-objective-conceptual photography, but also did not exclude the dynamics of photojournalism and its focus on people.

Always thoughtful shots

The exhibition “Evelyn Hofer. Encounters with the Camera”, which the Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation is showing at the Deutsche Börse headquarters in Eschborn. The show is the takeover of a touring exhibition that, with 67 works, focuses on Hofer's work in the 1960s and 1970s. During this time, in addition to photographic essays for magazines such as "Life", the "London Sunday Times" or the "New York Times Magazine", he also created a number of extensive city portraits for various book projects, for example about London, Dublin, New York and Washington.

Hofer, who moved to New York from Mexico in 1946, initially made a name for herself as a fashion photographer for well-known magazines such as “Harper's Bazaar” and “Vogue”, her career took a decisive turn in the 1950s when the writer Mary McCarthy hired her , for her book The Stones of Florence, a literary exploration of Florence, contributing the photographs, prelude to a whole series of books on cities and countries for which Hofer collaborated with various authors.

For these essays and city portraits, Hofer always roamed the streets extensively, but without relying on reporter luck and spontaneously capturing special moments with the camera.

Rather, she studied the places, let the light and atmosphere work on her, sought contact with the people, only to return and take pictures with a large format camera that needed a tripod.

With such a perfectionist approach, snapshots were certainly a thing of the past, and yet Hofer's well thought-out shots never seem staged.

Getting close to people without depriving them of their dignity

When she photographs a girl riding a bicycle or members of a rugby team in Dublin, a pensive policeman on his motorbike in Washington, a soot-smeared miner in Wales, or three ladies waiting outside a church in Harlem in their Sunday best, the images may seem fleeting and on remember street photography. But the people are consciously looking into the camera, aware of themselves and not surprised by the photographer. As a viewer, you get close to them without depriving them of their dignity.

Hofer, who died in Mexico City in 2009 at the age of 87, had photographed in both black and white and color throughout her career, as the situation demanded. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, she was one of the first photographers to regularly use color film, which was unusual at the time because the use of this film material required a different type of composition. In addition, the Dye Transfer printing process preferred by Hofer is limited in its color spectrum, which only underlines the impressiveness of these timeless photos in the best sense of the word.

The Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation has expanded Hofer's photographic encounters with the parallel exhibition "Female Perspectives from Vivian Maier to Barbara Klemm". Works by a total of nine photographers from the collection who are contemporaries of Evelyn Hofer are on display. And like Hofer, Diane Arbus, Sibylle Bergemann, Barbara Klemm, Ute Mahler, Vivian Maier, Susan Meiselas, Helga Paris, Mimi Plumb and Christine Spengler are all concerned in their works with the people and their circumstances in which they are photographed.

They all share an immense power of observation, even if they pursue different artistic concepts and have individual perspectives.

Like Hofer's recordings, the "Female Perspectives" are pointed views of society that remain in the memory beyond the moment.

The two exhibitions can be seen in The Cube, Mergenthalerallee 61, in Eschborn until January 21st.

On January 15, they can be viewed during the "open Saturday" from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. without prior registration.

The 2-G-plus regulations apply.

Further visits are possible after prior registration.

Information at www.deutscheboersephotographyfoundation.org