Deutsche-Arbeit-(German-Work)

Deutsche Arbeit (German Work). Verlag Ullstein, Berlin. 1930 Reversible dust jacket.

Published by Ernst Wasmuth, Berlin, under different simultaneously printed gravure editions, each identical for their 300 gravure-plate photographs and each variously titled for a different market: Picturesque Great Britain – The Architecture and the Landscape, and England: Baukunst un Landschaft or England. This publication, in both editions, is one of the most beautiful photographic books of the British Isles.

Each has their introductory text by Charles F.G. Masterman translated into the language of their respective markets. The term “Picturesque,” as used in the title of the English edition of the book, seems old fashioned today but in 1926 such description invited the audience to see artistic views of urban and country landscape. Hoppé’s photographic style is what we now call “Modernist.” Some of the characterizing aspects of this approach are found in Hoppé’s visualization of his subject where the picture subject matter may be a local pub but the two-dimensional geometric composition of its form is also intended by the photographer as an abstraction of shapes.