Steps, Rome

Frank Hofmann was an influential photographer, both commercially and artistically, who introduced interwar European modernist ideas and practices to New Zealand. Born in Prague in 1916, Hofmann (who was Jewish) escaped to England after the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia and emigrated to Christchurch in 1940 where he established himself as a freelance photographer.

Hofmann's work explores the camera's capacity to express heightened emotions and a contemporary essence, drawing on techniques that were pivotal to the modern photography movements of the 1920s and 1930s. His images frequently employ ambiguity, a lyrical interplay of line, shape, light and shadow, strange angles, and above all a transformation of the ordinary.

In 1960, Hofmann returned to Europe for the first time since his escape in 1940. Steps, Rome, 1960, shows a cleric dressed in dark robes descending a stone staircase. The scene combines a sense of solemnity and historical weight with dramatic formalism through the high angle and stark architectural features.

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