Profile On Thomas Hoepker

Ten years after 9/11 we look back on one of the most infamous images to be taken at the time. Thomas Hoepker's 'Young people relax during attack on the World Trade Center'  has caused controversy being released not in the Magnum's book of 9/11 at the time but five years later in September 2006.The image was released to be shown in one of Hoepker's retrospective exhibitions in Munich to commemorate his fifty years of being a photographer. We look at the impact of this photograph now and the life of Thomas Hoepker, one of Magnum's most commended photographers. While many feel that Hoepker is an artist he himself claims "I am not an artist. I am an image maker". [1]

'Young people relax during their lunch break along the East River while a huge plume of smoke rises from Lower Manhattan after the attack on the World Trade Center.'  

I find looking at this image five years after it's release and ten year after the event of 9/11, this picture has become history and memories of the past. Life goes on and just because a historical event has happen doesn't mean that we sit around and watch or stop. Human life slowly moves on and back to the normal routine. Ten years on we are the group in the foreground moving on with our lives, we are connected to the event, but separated by the blue sea between it that becomes ever wider as time passes it natural course of time.  
However this is not the only photograph taken by Hoepker on the day 'New York, NY, view from Manhattan bridge during aftermath of World Trade Center attacks'

'New York, NY, view from Manhattan bridge towards Brooklyn Bridge and downtown Manhattan during aftermath of World Trade Center attacks on September 11, 2001'

This photograph tells a very different scene to the peaceful, unknowingly tranquility of the first photograph. Looking at this photograph, it feels like a perfect beautiful day became a spot of destruction and terror. The dark billowing plumes of smoke are the central focus of this image. The normal view of the cityscape becomes lost in the smoke , it is background fading through the smoke. Viewing this image you feel unsure of what will happen is this what is possible to happen elsewhere in the world. The affects that while it may not directly affect you, lingers on the mind for some time. 

Thomas Hoepker was born in Germany 1936. He started taking photographs at sixteen, which he sold to classmates and friends. He worked for a photographer for Munchner Illustrierte and Kristall between the years of 1960 to 1963, photographing from over the world. He joined Stern magazine as a photo-reporter in 1964. 

Some of Hoepker's most famous images have been that of Heavy Weight Champion Muhammad Ali. Hoepker talks about following Ali in a interview with http://blog.leica-camera.com He comments that they were his first photographs for Stern Magazine, where he was working as a staff photographer. He notes that "I first met Muhammad Ali during a world championship fight in London, but I did not confine myself to photograph him boxing. I also photographed him in more private moments, for instance, while he was being measured by a tailor on Savile Row. Our motto back in those days was, “We stay until we are kicked out”. And, as a matter of fact, Muhammad Ali never kicked me out."[2]

An inmate moment between Ali and Belinda Boyd, later his second wife.  

Hoepker has and will be a very noted photographer for time to come. His photographs have a outlasting effect and comment to us, decades after the subject was taken. It seems almost ironic that the 'Young people relax during attack on the World Trade Center' response has become the focus and remembrance of Hoepker's work over five decades. All his other works feel dismissed by this one photograph and people's responses to it. Forgotten is his celebrity photographs of Andy Warhol and Muhammad Ali, which shows us a inmate side to the Heavy Weight Champion's life. His photographs around the world of forgotten and secret worlds; photograph in which a Geshia preparing a tea ceremony in Kyoto. That even though Hoepker has won multiple awards and had multiple exhibitions.His life work is summed up by one 9/11 photograph.  
 

Sources 
[1] http://www.magnumphotos.com/C.aspx?VP=XSpecific_MAG.PhotographerDetail_VPage&l1=0&pid=2K7O3R13ZX4A&nm=Thomas%20Hoepker
[2] http://blog.leica-camera.com/interviews/thomas-hoepker-heartland/