Background information
"From today´s perspective it sounds like a fairy tale, when Thomas HOEPKER talks about the beginnings of his great America Reportage: 'Would you like to discover America?' asked editor-in-chief Horst Mahnke one day. 'We sat in the 'Kristall' magazine conference room. ‘Sure’, we said, ‘but what exactly do you want us to do there?’ – ‘I think’, the answer, ‘you’ll fly to New York and then you rent a car and you drive westward until you meet the Pacific, and then you drive back on another route and you take pictures and write about what you see. No time limit.’ We liked the brief briefing and nodded. The year was 1963 and I was 27.‹ Five years before, Robert FRANK´s groundbreaking book 'Les Americains' ('The Americans') had been published, and as many others also the young photographer Thomas HOEPKER was very impressed about the book. Now his own road trip took him 27,000 km through a country, that was little known beyond clichés in Europe at that time and he used his travel for a deep insight into a fascinating and even then equally ambivalent society.
Content
In his observations author Hans-Michael Koetzle claims: 'this America reportage by Thomas HOEPKER is still a prime example of committed photojournalism personally interpreted, of photography as reportage at the highest level of formal aestheticism. 'Heartland' stands for a piece of photo history and at the same time turns out to be oppressively up to date.'" (peperoni books, 2013)
About German Magnum photographer, Thomas HOEPKER (b. 1936, in Munich)
Photo books by Thomas HOEPKER
- Format
- HC (no dust jacket, as issued), 24 x 21,5 x 1,5 cm., 84 pp., 68 triton b/w + 8 color ills., text language: English