AndyMcD
All-Pro
- Location
- East Midlands, UK
Several years ago my wife and I took a trip to Arizona with all of our parents. The trip was arranged by my parents because my father had a life long desire to see the Grand Canyon, having been inspired by a book he read in the early 1950s when first starting out as a professional photographer. We ended up as nominated drivers for the trip, as none of the others felt confident driving - in fact, it was just me that drove for the entire 2-3 weeks.
During the trip, it turned out that it wasn't actually the Grand Canyon but Rainbow Bridge that had inspired him, and by chance he managed to take a trip there with my mother during our holiday.
Sadly, he passed away in 2004 and my mother passed away in April of this year which was during the UK lockdown so I wasn't able to attend her funeral and all of the arrangements and discussions were carried out electronically. During one of these discussions my sister off-handedly remarked that I would be receiving the "Hoppé Book" as per my mother's instructions. I had no idea what my sister was talking about, and she was shocked that I didn't know that it was this book that had been my dad's inspiration and that it had been kept at my mother's bedside for years, so she could pass it on to me as thanks for enabling them to make the trip to Arizona all those years ago.
I finally received the book a few weeks ago, it is "Hundred Thousand Exposures" by E.O. Hoppé. It is a small (A5 or so) sized hardback with yellowing pages and black and white photographs. As I have read through it, I have discovered that Hoppé was probably the pre-eminent UK photographer of the first half of the 20th century (up to 1939 at least). He photographed pretty much everyone of any importance either in his studio or on location around the world, including royalty and dictators. He was also an extremely talented landscape photographer.
I was sitting reading this book wondering how on earth I had never heard of him, so I looked him up on the internet. It seems that whilst in his 70s (in the 1950s) he sold his entire archive to a photographic library who just buried it in their stock archive by subject rather than by the author's name. It is only within the past 20 or so years that his archive has been brought out from the obscurity that it was accidentally placed into and his work is being reassessed.
If you get a chance, I would recommend taking a look at his online archive which has a bulk of his work now available.
During the trip, it turned out that it wasn't actually the Grand Canyon but Rainbow Bridge that had inspired him, and by chance he managed to take a trip there with my mother during our holiday.
Sadly, he passed away in 2004 and my mother passed away in April of this year which was during the UK lockdown so I wasn't able to attend her funeral and all of the arrangements and discussions were carried out electronically. During one of these discussions my sister off-handedly remarked that I would be receiving the "Hoppé Book" as per my mother's instructions. I had no idea what my sister was talking about, and she was shocked that I didn't know that it was this book that had been my dad's inspiration and that it had been kept at my mother's bedside for years, so she could pass it on to me as thanks for enabling them to make the trip to Arizona all those years ago.
I finally received the book a few weeks ago, it is "Hundred Thousand Exposures" by E.O. Hoppé. It is a small (A5 or so) sized hardback with yellowing pages and black and white photographs. As I have read through it, I have discovered that Hoppé was probably the pre-eminent UK photographer of the first half of the 20th century (up to 1939 at least). He photographed pretty much everyone of any importance either in his studio or on location around the world, including royalty and dictators. He was also an extremely talented landscape photographer.
I was sitting reading this book wondering how on earth I had never heard of him, so I looked him up on the internet. It seems that whilst in his 70s (in the 1950s) he sold his entire archive to a photographic library who just buried it in their stock archive by subject rather than by the author's name. It is only within the past 20 or so years that his archive has been brought out from the obscurity that it was accidentally placed into and his work is being reassessed.
If you get a chance, I would recommend taking a look at his online archive which has a bulk of his work now available.