E O Hoppe Portraits - Society, Studio and Street

Margo Fonteyn at 16 by E O Hoppe

Street scenes by E O Hoppe

Photographs can be hugely emotional and this exhibition of over 150 photographs, many of which have never previously been exhibited, is a real gem for artists, photographers and historians. E O Hoppe, born in Munich in 1878, was one of the original celebrity photographs of the early 1910's and 1920's. Hello magazine thinks it invented celeb photographs but Hoppe had the rich and famous, including royalty, queuing outside the door of his studio housed in a 33-room Kensington house as early as 1913 to be photographed. His portraits include sittings with Margo Fonteyn, David Lloyd George, Vaslac Nijinkskym Kind George V and George Bernard Shaw. Not content with just the scalps of the 'it-people' of the 1920's, in 1922, he produced a book called the Book of Fair Women, which included a compilation of women he considered to be the most beautiful on earth. He included 32 photographs of women from 24 different countries. Hoppe then went on to create a stunning collection of street photographs often hiding his camera in a bag so that he could photograph his subjects in secret. The result is a living museum of stunning photographs that depict people carrying on their daily lives in the 1920's and 30's.