thu 28/03/2024

Hoppé Portraits: Society, Studio and Street, National Portrait Gallery | reviews, news & interviews

Hoppé Portraits: Society, Studio and Street, National Portrait Gallery

Hoppé Portraits: Society, Studio and Street, National Portrait Gallery

A lost world regained by an extraordinary eye

If you’ve seen pictures of the Ballets Russes, then you’ve seen Hoppé photographs. But then, if you’ve seen any society pictures from the 1920s and 1930s, then you’ve seen Hoppé. And famous writers. In fact, for portrait photography in Britain between the World Wars, you can pretty well bet the photo is Hoppé’s. But what's so good about this new exhibition is that it shows a side to Hoppé that is much less well-known - the street-view. And these photographs are thrilling, in form as well as content.

Fonteyn_at_16E.O. (for Emil Otto) Hoppé moved to Britain from his native Germany in 1902, aged 22, and he lived and worked here until his death. His images of the Ballets Russes, from their earliest visits, are some of the most famous of those dancers – Karsavina was one of his favourites, and there are a number of beautiful images here. But even better is a snatched picture of Nijinsky in his Spectre de la Rose costume, all bee-stung lips, and greasy-looking make-up (apart from anything else, it reminds us why "greasepaint" was called "greasepaint"). The photograph has a remarkable “you are here” feel to it, entirely unexpected for that early date. And the photograph of the (pre-nose-job) 16-year-old Margot Fonteyn, plump and childish and cheeky (pictured right), again gives a feeling of spontaneity to a genre of photographs that, at the time, otherwise felt highly posed.

Much more posed, and more pompous-feeling, are the photographs of the “great” writers and intellectuals. They are period pieces now, and it is impossible to imagine a time when writers were treated with this kind of reverence. The photograph of Henry James does indeed make him look like a man who could not construct a sentence with fewer than three subclauses in it. Kipling is in pugnacious profile, moustache bristling. Shaw stands magisterially with his back to the fireplace, surrounded by the paraphernalia of the writer. But there is freshness here too in many of the images: the photograph of Einstein, long famous, makes him look startlingly young and shy and in need of protection, while Ezra Pound, on the other hand, looks every inch the wild man of modernism that he wanted to appear.

Drinking_tea_in_the_Busmans_CanteenYet while these are all terribly interesting, and sometimes a lot of fun, the real revelation of this show lies in the opening section, where Hoppé’s photographs of daily life just astonish. Their construction is quiet, they don’t shout out, but they are, in their composition and shape, so daring that they take your breath away. Drinking Tea at the Busman’s Canteen (pictured left) is a wonderful period piece. But it’s also a startlingly modern vision: the black curve of the busman’s back, the white cup over his face like a full stop – it’s virtually a piece of abstract art. As is the British Museum Underground Station (main picture), all swirling whites and blacks, gleaming and ever-so-faintly creepy. And again, between those art-deco tiles, the typographic advertisement and the be-hatted silhouette, it is a terrific evocation of a lost world.


Deskwork_at_The_British_Union_Of_FascistsIndeed, in many ways, Hoppé is like his great contemporary Cartier-Bresson, in that he makes the ordinary extraordinary. Yet his is a much gentler eye, for the most part (although not in the ominous image of the office of the British Union of Fascists, surmounted by a glowering image of the odious Oswald Mosley (pictured right): Hoppé gives that its full value). He has the same sharp eye for the unusual as Cartier-Bresson – the image of Savoy Hotel waiters feeding the birds by the Embankment is a symphony of weirdness, without ever dropping into whimsy. Partly this is because of Hoppé's pragmatism: the photograph of a zookeeper and hippo makes sure to tell us the names of both participants: Ernie (zookeeper) and Joan (hippo). Partly it is his detachment: the photograph of a student ironing her clothes at Lady Margaret Hall could in other hands be terribly schmaltzy. Hoppé isolates her, and thus gives her great dignity.

But for us, today, the extraordinary part of that image is how far away it is. The girl, for she can’t be much more, is dressed like our idea of a joke elderly spinster aunt, while a painter in St James’s Park sits under an umbrella that has been taken straight out of a Proust setting. Even a band of street musicians, the violinist without legs, and their heart-breakingly straightforward sign, "Trying to live", bring home to us that 70 years ago, now, is a long time.

But Hoppé's great eye reminds us once more that that world existed, and, for the duration of the exhibition, even makes us believe that we can recapture it.

Comments

I went to this exhibition this week with a friend and was totally absorbed.A wonderful pictorial chronicle of the times,it was nearly lost to view in the Fifties,until an archivist uncovered the pictures,which had been badly chronicled,and thus saved these amazing photographs for posterity. In these modern times,when buildings like The Shard threaten to dominate the landscape,this exhibition is invaluable as a reminder of the simplicity of visual arts- in an era which,sadly,is in danger of being completely obscured. Thank you for this article.

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