Evelyn Hofer
The Coombe - Girl with Bicycle

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Images(3)

Artist Evelyn Hofer American, born Germany, 1922–2009

CultureBritish

Titles

The Coombe - Girl with Bicycle

Date1966

Place depictedDublin, Ireland

MediumDye imbibition print

DimensionsImage: 13 5/16 × 10 5/16 in. (33.8 × 26.2 cm)
Sheet: 16 7/8 × 13 15/16 in. (42.9 × 35.4 cm)

Credit LineMuseum purchase funded by the Prospero Foundation

Object number83.68

Not on view

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Department

Photography

Object Type

PHOTOGRAPHS

DescriptionEvelyn Hofer was working as a fashion photographer for Harper’s Bazaar when she began to make portraits of cities in pictures and words, collaborating with authors on a series of books. Dublin: A Portrait, published in 1967 and authored with V. S. Pritchett, featured Hofer’s distinct style of photography, mixing portraiture with city views and landscapes. Offering a subjective vision of documentary photography, her work rests somewhere between a taxonomic portrait of society by photographers such as August Sander and the quick, candid snapshots of everyday life by photographers such as William Eggleston. Hofer worked with a large-format camera to carefully compose pictures in both black-and-white and color, one of the first to adopt color film outside the realm of commercial photography since its invention. She photographed her subjects where she found them, but posed them with a still, quiet introspection with an air of timelessness.
ProvenanceThe artist; purchased by MFAH, 1983.
Inscriptions, Signatures and Marks

Inscribed in pencil, verso, upper center: Cat. No [underlined] 208 // “The Coombe” – girl with bicycle” // Dublin 1966 . // Evelyn Hofer [signature]
Inscribed in pencil, verso, center: 5/10

Signed in pencil, verso, upper center: Evelyn Hofer

Cataloguing data may change with further research.

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