portraiture/ Walker Evans

PORTRAITURE: 

Portraits have been around since the beginning of time to describe physical features. But more importantly power and status. Portraiture as a genre can be seen as early as Ancient Egyptian wall paintings of gods and pharaohs. Ancient Greeks also had a fascination with portraiture.  Romans followed a similar tradition borrowing motifs from Ancient Egypt and Greece and developing a flair for portrait busts of key power personalities. Ancient Greek and Romans were also the ones who started the tradition of depicting figure-heads on coins. During the Middles ages portraiture declined and was strictly confined to donor portraits.
Portraiture has come along way since the camera was first introduced because the only way of getting a portrait done was by having yourself painted by a professional artist. you would only get painted if you were famous, rich, or important of some sort. 

WALKER EVENS:

walker Evans was an american photographer best known for his work on Farm Security Administration (FSA) who mainly worked on 'The Great Depression'. Much of his work was taken with a 8x10-inch camera with a large format, for the FSA. He said that his goal as a photographer was to make pictures that are "literate, authoritative, and out of this world''. Many of his works are in the permanent collections of museums and have been the subject of retrospectives at such institutions as 'The Metropolitan Museum of Art' or 'George Eastman'. 

Born in St. Louis, Missouri Walker Evans came from an affluent family. His father was an advertising director. He spent his youth in Chicago and New York City. He graduated from Phillips Academy, in Andover, Massachusetts, 1922. He studied French literature for a year at Williams College, spending much of his time in the school's library, before dropping out. After spending a year in Paris in 1926, he returned to the United States to join the edgy literary and art crowd in New York City. John Cheever, Hart Crane, andLincoln Kirstein were among his friends. He was a clerk for a stockbroker firm in Wall street from 1927 to 1929.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walker_Evans  

Word Profile of Thomas Hoepker

Thomas Hoepker Profile

 

Thomas Hoepker is a German photographer born in 1936, June 10th. He is a member of Magnum Photos and well known for his stylish colour photo features. He also documented the 9/11 World Trade Centre destruction. He first started taking photos at just 16 years of age with his grandfather’s old 9x12 glass plate camera. He developed the prints in his bathroom and his kitchen, and he started to sell them to his friends and to the public to earn a little money. He studied art and archaeology in Germany. He was only there for a year but he was taught about understanding images and composition. In 1960 to 1963 he worked as a photographer around the world for Kristall. Then in 1964 he began working for a big company called Stern Magazine. In the 1970s he also worked for German TV and a cameraman. Making a lot of documentary films and Magnum Photos first began distributing Hoepker's photographs in 1964. Hoepker became a full member in 1989. He served as Magnum President from 2003 to 2006.

 

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Hoepker

 

For a long period of his career, Thomas Hoepker used the Leica camera because he could get his Leica camera to take photographs for the wider angles he wanted to shoot. Thomas Hoepker’s 9/11 photo wasn’t published in 2001 he thought his own picture was too confusing to be published in 2001. Thomas Hoepker had been trying to make his way down to Manhattan on the morning of 9/11. On the way there he saw out of the corner of his eye, he saw a scene that showed a group of young people that were sitting in the sunshine while the dark thick smoke was rising behind them, in the background. He got out of the car, took three shots of that scene and drove on to get closer to Manhattan. That great image ended up on a wall in an exhibition, in his hometown Munich. The image was with 200 other photographs of his. The image was also on the cover of his book (Return of the Maya) which was with the show as well. When he did guided tours that particular photo kept having questions being asked about it by people viewing the exhibition and the press too.  For the newspapers, the photo was published in 15 newspapers in Germany and in United States newspapers it was only published once.

 

           This is a photo from his book ‘Return of the Maya’

 

Source: http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/culturebox/2006/09/i_took_that_911_photo.html

 

His exhibitions:

 

2006, Photographien 1955-2005, Photomuseum, Munich, Germany

1995, Retrospective, Claus Tebbe Gallery, Cologne, Germany

1994, the Maya Kunsthalle Cologne, Cologne, Germany

1985/87, Retrospective, 25 cities in Germany

1976, Rizzoli Gallery, New York and Rizzoli Gallery, Washington D.C., USA

1965, Kunst und Gewerbe Museum, Hamburg, Germany

 

Filmography:

 

2005, Ice-cold Splendor

2003, Easter Island

2000, Robinson Crusoe Island

1998, Death in a Cornfield

1973, the Village Arabati

 

Bibliography:

 

2005- Thomas Hoepker, Photographien 1955-2005, Schirmer & Mosel, Germany

1998- Return of the Maya: Guatemala. A Tale of Survival, Henry Holt, USA

1991- Land of Enchantment, New Mexico, Philip-Morris books, Germany

1989- HA Schult, Fetisch Auto, Germany

1988- Rome, Hofmann & Campe, Germany

1987- New Yorker: 50 unusual portraits, Stemmle, Schaffhausen, Germany

1986- HA Schult, New York IST Berlin, Germany

1986- Amerika: History of the discovery from Florida to Canada, Germany

1985- Leben in the DDR, Life in East Germany, Sternbuch, Germany

1985- Ansichten.Fotos von 1960 bis 1985, Braus, Heidelberg, Germany

1984- Der Wahn vom Weltreich: Germany’s former Colonies, Sternbuch, Germany

1984- Now! Überdosis New York/ HA Schult., Germany

1983- Die New York-Story, GEO Buch, Germany

1983- Thomas Höpker (I Grandi Photographic), Rizzoli, Italy

1978- Vienna, Time/Life books, Holland

1977- Heinz Mack Expedition in künstliche Gärten. Art in Desert and Ice, Sternbuch, Germany

1976- Berliner Wände, C. Hanser, Germany

1974- Die Iren und ihre Lieder, (Ireland and its songs), Germany

1967- Horst Janssen, artist’s portraits, Galerie Brockstedt, Germany

1963- Yatun papa, father of the Indians and Dr. Theodor Binder, Kosmos, Germany

1963- Lebendiges Kiel, Presseamt der Stadt Kiel, Germany

1960- Finnland, Terra Magica, Germany

1957- Jugend in dieser Zeit, Steingrüben, Germany

 

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Hoepker