Hoppe's Portrait of a Country: Photographs of Greater Romania

Descriere

Acclaimed as the most famous photographer in the world in 1920, London-based celebrity photographer E.O. Hoppé (1878 1972) pursued a project to make a collective national portrait of the recently unified territory, Greater Romania. In July of 1923, Hoppé ventured out of his South Kensington studio to photograph the Romanian people in their natural environs, embarking on a trip that would produce his first national typological survey. Welcomed as a guest across the country, from the royal palace of the King and Queen to gypsy camps in the hinterland, Hoppé created an unparalleled documentation of Romania s topographic, architectural and human diversity. Hoppé s observations were published as a travel book in London the following year, exposing the greater public to Romania s intrinsic beauty and rich culture. Hoppé s Portrait of a Country: Photographs of Greater Romania, 1923 presents a photo-typology as a case study of a nation on the cusp of international recognition.
Graham Howe is the CEO and founder of Curatorial Assistance. He received his MFA in Painting, Sculpture and Graphic Art, majoring in Photography, from the University of California, Los Angeles, in 1979. Howe was the founding director of the Australian Centre for Photography, Sydney, curator to the Graham Nash Collection, and visiting curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. He is the biographer of American photographer, Paul Outerbridge and German-born, British photographer, E.O. Hoppé. Howe is the author of over twenty books on photographic art and is also a practicing artist. Adrian-Silvan Ionescu is director of the G. Oprescu Institute of Art History and associate professor at the National University of Arts in Bucharest, Romania. He was formerly a curator at the National Museum of Art and at the Museum of the City of Bucharest, where he served as the deputy director from 1990 1993, before focusing on a career in research and teaching. He received his PhD in 1997 from the N. Iorga institute of History at the Romanian Academy. His research is focused on the history of Romanian photography, 19th-century fine arts and urban civilization, and the history of civil and military costume. He has authored fourteen books and has been awarded multiple honors including the chevalier of the Crown of Romania Order (2015) and Doctor Honoris Causa of the Academy of Music, Theater and Fine Arts of the Republic of Moldavia (2016).