{"id":9,"date":"2014-09-23T18:05:49","date_gmt":"2014-09-23T17:05:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cabophoto.com\/blog\/?p=9"},"modified":"2017-10-31T13:26:57","modified_gmt":"2017-10-31T12:26:57","slug":"thomas-hopker-in-cologne","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cabophoto.com\/blog\/thomas-hopker-in-cologne\/","title":{"rendered":"Thomas H\u00f6pker in Cologne"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cFor the most part it\u2019s your fault\u201d, I said, at the same time smiling at the gentleman vis-\u00e0-vis. He tilted his head and gave me a questioning look. \u201cThat I became interested in photography is for the most part your fault\u201d, I explained.<\/p>\n

It was Thomas Hoepker I was talking to. He is one of the most influential German photojournalists of the last fifty years. When I was a little boy, Hoepker worked for STERN<\/em>, then the magazine with the highest circulation in my country. As my family didn\u2019t have the means to travel a lot, my mother and I would read all the articles they published about life in different places of the world with great interest. Many of these articles were illustrated with pictures by Thomas Hoepker.<\/p>\n

In 1976 he and his wife Eva Windmoeller, who also was a journalist, moved to New York City where he worked as a correspondent for STERN<\/em>. It\u2019s safe to say that he had significant influence on my picture of the United States. Later on he became Director of Photography at the American edition of GEO<\/em>. In 1989 he joined Magnum Photos and was the agency\u2019s president from 2003 o 2006.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>

\"\"<\/div><\/div><\/a>
Thomas H\u00f6pker at the opening of his show at in-focus Galerie in Cologne.<\/div><\/div><\/div>

In September of 2014, thirty years later, I was talking to him at a small photo gallery in Cologne, in focus Galerie<\/em>. The gallery showed his exhibition \u201cIn Amerika \u2013 1963-2013\u201d and he was there to sign his books. At age 78 he still has an impressive presence.<\/p>\n

Hoepker was fortunate insofar that he got to travel to the United States in 1963, when his employer at the time, the German magazine Kristall<\/em>, sent him and a writer to travel the country for three months. His pictures from the trip clearly show the influence of Robert Frank, who had published his book The Americans<\/em> just five years earlier.<\/p>\n

Following this story he began to travel around the globe. Yet he always returned to the U.S., where he photographed a number of essays, the most famous of which is about Muhammad Ali. Eventually he produced a book on Ali, Champ<\/em>.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>

\"\"<\/div><\/div><\/a>
Thomas H\u00f6pker talking to Rolf Adam at the opening of his show at in-focus Galerie in Cologne.<\/div><\/div><\/div>

Hoepker was in New York City when the 9\/11 attacks happened. One of the pictures he took that day became iconic. You can see it here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

His latest book just hit the market. Wanderlust<\/em> is a retrospective of his long career. Its strength, showing pictures from a multitude of locations and situations, is also its weakness. Personally, I would have enjoyed a more structured approach, maybe with chapters dedicated to certain subjects or ideas. Yet for anyone looking for a comprehensive presentation of Thomas Hoepker\u2019s work, this book is a must-have.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0\u201cFor the most part it\u2019s your fault\u201d, I said, at the same time smiling at the gentleman vis-\u00e0-vis. He tilted his head and gave me a questioning look. \u201cThat I became interested in photography is for the most part your fault\u201d, I explained.It was Thomas Hoepker I was talking to. He is one of the most influential German photojournalists of … Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"kt_blocks_editor_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-events","category-photographers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cabophoto.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cabophoto.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cabophoto.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cabophoto.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cabophoto.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.cabophoto.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":350,"href":"https:\/\/www.cabophoto.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9\/revisions\/350"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cabophoto.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cabophoto.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cabophoto.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cabophoto.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}