Unveiling a Secret. Industrial photographs, 1912-1937
curated by Urs Stahel

«No man can stand beneath the span of some mighty bridge with its soaring pillars and not feel that inherent something that lifts him above the physical plane, reaching out to immensities veiled from full understanding»

E.O Hoppé*

Emil Otto Hoppé - Hoppé is born on the 14^th of April 1878 in Munich and studies drawing with Prof. Hans von Bartels. In 1902, he meets the portrait artist Franz von Lebach and decides to move to London where he works for the Deutsche Bank and begins to take pictures. In 1903, he becomes a member of the Royal Photographic Society and in a very short time the London Illustrated News publishes twelve of his portraits, he wins the Regular Award, takes part in photographic exhibitions and wins a Royal Photographic Society scholarship (FRPS). In 1907 he leaves his job at the Deutsche Bank and opens his first photographic studio in London. In 1909, he sets up and organises the Great Britain section at the Dresden International Photographic Exhibition when he shows for the first time his topographical views of London, a work that he will carry on for more than fifty years. In 1910, he sets up a personal exhibition at the Royal Photographic Society which will be the first of several. In a very short time, he becomes in fact the most famous portrait artist of his age: he portrays members of the British royal family and the most famous European artists, politicians and scientists of the time such as the Russian dancer Lydia Lopokova, Ezra Pound, Filippo Tommaso Martinetti and Albert Einstein. In 1914, Hoppé becomes Art editor for the brand new magazine Colour, while in 1916 he contributes to the first numbers of Vogue England with pictures and editorials. In 1920, The New York Times announces Hoppé's arrival to the States and his intention of finding five american beauties to be part of the soon to be released volume The Book of Fair Women, published in 1922. During the same year he publishes the volume Taken From Life written by J. D. Beresford. Between the 1920s and the 1930s, confident of the strength of his reputation as topographic and portrait artist, he starts travelling around the globe working on different assignments and commissions. Nevertheless, the main objective of his explorations is to describe the fascination and majesty of modern industrial sites that have for him an extraordinary and revolutionary payload. In 1930, he publishes Deutsche Arbeit and various other publications. He comes back to London in 1939 when the war has started, but he will travel again at the end of the conflict. In 1947, sponsored by the Colonia Office, he starts a wide photographic and journalistic survey of Jamaica. In 1954, he sets up the exhibition A Half Century of Photography at Foyles Art Gallery in London, that was then shown at the Lenbachhaus in Munich and later on, thanks to the British Council, in India and the Middle-East. In the same year, feeling that the end of his career was getting closer, Hoppé decides to sell most of his collection to a photographic archive in London where it remains literally buried for decades. In 1968, on the occasion of his ninetieth birthday, he is interviewed and photographed by John Hedgecoe for the magazine Queen and the Kodak Gallery organises an exhibition in his honour. In 1972, he receives the Royal Photographic Society Honorary Fellowship but he dies in December of the same year. His name sinks into oblivion until 1994, when Graham Howe starts with his group, the Curatorial Assistance, a big recovery operation and digitalisation of his entire work.

Photo: E.O. Hoppé, Self-portrait, Germany, c.1933. © E.O. Hoppé Estate Collection/Curatorial Assistance.

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Doing, the limit, the beauty, the origins of an Industrial Italy
curated by Enrica Viganò and Camillo Fornasieri

«I photograph with the same spirit in which marble is sculpted. I try to carve my lights and shadows and obtain, with living things, those forms that fascinate me so much»

Stefano Robino

Stefano Robino - Was born in 1922 in Turin, where he still lives today, Stefano Robino began working as a technical designer at FIAT Grandi Motori in 1939 and, in 1940, began to photograph. After the war he worked as a painter, in his free time he visited the studios of painters Sartorio and Spazzapan, showing their works in various solo and group exhibitions. Soon, his passion for photography led him to join the Photographic Section of the FIAT Sports Cultural Group and he gets involved in the expositive and cultural life of the group. His gaze is focused on realities that are part of his own life, on paths of collective life and, above all, the world of work and social life, of the suburbs and the new emerging industrial landscape. His images, conveyed through exhibitions and important national and international press coverage, earned him many awards, acclaim and notoriety worldwide. In 1965 he became head of the photographic laboratory FIAT Grandi Motori in Turin, while between 1971 and 1974 he is head of the Publicity Department of Grandi Motori Trieste. His photographs have been published in numerous international magazines, including LIFE, US Camera, ModernPhotography, PopularPhotography, LEICA Fotografie, La Stampa, Ferrania, L’Europeo, Rivista Italiana and Progresso Fotografico. In 2002 the new offices of the Management, Organisation, Planning, Development and Human Resources of the Piedmont Region were furnished with one hundred of his large photographic panels.

Photo: Stefano Robino, The Departure of Christopher Columbus, Genoa 1957. 45,7x36,1 cm.