Thomas Hoepker: All Around The World – Unseen Color & Early Black and White

through 13 January 2024 // Gallery Buchkunst Berlin

Since30 September 2023, Galerie Buchkunst Berlin has been presenting the new exhibition All around the world – unseen colour & early black and white, with photographs by the legendary Magnum photographer Thomas Hoepker. Hoepker’s numerous unpublished early recordings, which are now being shown for the first time, were taken in Rio, Hong Kong, New York, Naples, and Paris.

More than a decade before the term New Color entered the history of photography, Thomas Hoepker was already photographing with Kodachrome and Ektachrome slide film in Southeast Asia, Africa, South America, and many countries in Europe. A new discovery! In the extensive bundles of unpublished slide films that Thomas Hoepker took around the world from 1959 onwards, during his photo documentations around the world, there are many shots in which color represents an extended and dominant element of the pictorial composition, and takes on the role of narrative. Hoepker was usually on the go with two Leica cameras: one for black and white, the other for colour. The early colour photographs, which often defy the rules of photojournalism, describe through their multitude and artistic quality an independent view of the development of the world, and serve as corresponding contemporary witnesses in an abstract manner. They add new and unique shots to the seemingly endless canon of images in artistic photography. Hoepker’s multi-layered work is supplemented by a new reading through the presentation of these images for the first time.

As a further highlight of the exhibition, a selection of black-and-white photographs, taken in Italy between 1956 and 1959 and among the photographer’s earliest series, will be presented in the Galerie Buchkunst Berlin to mark the publication of the photo book THOMAS HOEPKER – ITALIA.