Opens March 24
Evelyn Hofer (American, born Germany, 1922–2009), Gravediggers, Dublin, 1966, gelatin silver print, High Museum of Art, Atlanta, gift of Daniel Greenberg and Susan Steinhauser in honor of Brett Abbott, 2016.426. © Estate of Evelyn Hofer.
Evelyn Hofer (1922–2009) was a highly innovative photographer whose prolific career spanned five decades. Despite her extraordinary output, she was underrecognized during her lifetime. At a time when spontaneous black-and-white pictures were the hallmarks of avant-garde photography, she favored cumbersome large-format cameras and embraced color materials. Subtle and rigorous, her photographs possess a captivating stillness, exactitude, and sobriety that ran counter to the frenetic energy of her fellow street photographers of the post–World War II era.
The exhibition focuses on Hofer’s work from the 1960s, when she made her greatest impact through a series of photobooks devoted to European and American cities, including Florence, London, New York, Washington, DC, and Dublin. Produced in collaboration with notable writers, these books, which combine landscapes and architectural views with portraiture, communicate the character and personality of these urban capitals during a period of intense architectural, social, and economic transformation following World War II. Shot in both color and black and white, these photographs include insightful and sensitive portraits, fastidious architectural compositions, and street views that convey the vibrancy and complexity of life in these changing urban spaces.
