Italia

by Thomas Hoepker

Photographs: Thomas Hoepker

Text: Essay: Raúl Morales Barcia, Nachwort: Thomas Gust

Publisher: Buchkunst Berlin

200 pages

Pictures: 124

Year: 2023

ISBN: 978-3-9819805-7-8

Price: 49.50 €

Comments: Hard cover, linen binding, 16,5 x 23,5 cm.

Thomas Hoepker, then 19 years old, regularly traveled to Italy in 1956 and the following years to take photographs with a Leica MP. His view was not that of a tourist, but that of an explorer. He creates clear, often cinematographic-looking image compositions that tell self-contained stories of encounters with the people and their everyday rituals - with elements of compassion and humor. Hoepker photographs in the big cities, in Rome, Florence, Siena, Venice and Naples. He travels just as intensively in the south of Italy, Calabria and Sicily. In these photographs Hoepker finds a social perspective that will accompany and shape his work. His humanistic view and the cinematic-like image compositions bring the photographs close to the neorealist cinema of the time.

And everything is entirely the Italy of those years, of the onset of mass tourism in the big cities accompanied by a certain modernization and the Italy of simplicity and poverty of the south, which he documented in detail on several trips. An attitude to life between awakening and tradition, an everyday kaleidoscope full of street scenes, religious processions or political demonstrations - everything becomes part of the narrative. During the trips to Italy between 1956 and 1959, a convolute of more than 10,000 negatives was created, from which the book ITALIA presents an extensive selection of 124 photographs on 200 pages.

In the photographs, which were taken between 1956 and 1959 in Italy, Thomas Hoepker develops his photographic language and creates individual memory images. It is the beginning of a photographic career that lasts more than 6 decades, which allows him to travel the world and leads him via the magazines Stern and Geo in 1989 to become a full member of the photo agency Magnum Photos. From 2003 to 2007 he is its president. The focus of all his pictures and reportages is the human being and his life in the social communities.

The photo book is accompanied by an insightful essay by author and director Raúl Morales Barcia, as well as an afterword by publisher and editor Thomas Gust.

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Italia

by Thomas Hoepker

Photographs: Thomas Hoepker

Text: Essay: Raúl Morales Barcia, Nachwort: Thomas Gust

Publisher: Buchkunst Berlin

200 pages

Pictures: 124

Year: 2023

ISBN: 978-3-9819805-7-8

Price: 49.50 €

Comments: Hard cover, linen binding, 16,5 x 23,5 cm.

Thomas Hoepker, then 19 years old, regularly traveled to Italy in 1956 and the following years to take photographs with a Leica MP. His view was not that of a tourist, but that of an explorer. He creates clear, often cinematographic-looking image compositions that tell self-contained stories of encounters with the people and their everyday rituals - with elements of compassion and humor. Hoepker photographs in the big cities, in Rome, Florence, Siena, Venice and Naples. He travels just as intensively in the south of Italy, Calabria and Sicily. In these photographs Hoepker finds a social perspective that will accompany and shape his work. His humanistic view and the cinematic-like image compositions bring the photographs close to the neorealist cinema of the time.

And everything is entirely the Italy of those years, of the onset of mass tourism in the big cities accompanied by a certain modernization and the Italy of simplicity and poverty of the south, which he documented in detail on several trips. An attitude to life between awakening and tradition, an everyday kaleidoscope full of street scenes, religious processions or political demonstrations - everything becomes part of the narrative. During the trips to Italy between 1956 and 1959, a convolute of more than 10,000 negatives was created, from which the book ITALIA presents an extensive selection of 124 photographs on 200 pages.

In the photographs, which were taken between 1956 and 1959 in Italy, Thomas Hoepker develops his photographic language and creates individual memory images. It is the beginning of a photographic career that lasts more than 6 decades, which allows him to travel the world and leads him via the magazines Stern and Geo in 1989 to become a full member of the photo agency Magnum Photos. From 2003 to 2007 he is its president. The focus of all his pictures and reportages is the human being and his life in the social communities.

The photo book is accompanied by an insightful essay by author and director Raúl Morales Barcia, as well as an afterword by publisher and editor Thomas Gust.

More books by Thomas Hoepker