THOMAS HOEPKER

One of the many differences between human beings and animals is that humans need to reflect their own lives;
they need to record special moments and to freeze scenes of their lives.
That's why Photography nowadays is one of the most important media of our time.

We find photography everywhere, magazines, books, TV, posters.
We are constantly fed by pictures 24 hours a day.
Our century if full of great photographers.
Ton/y Vaccaro, Eddie Adams, Diane Arbus and many other artists have helped to enrich our century with colour and meaningful pictures; and in this post I am going to analyse the life and the work of one of them.
Thomas Hoepker is a German photographer.
He was born in Munich in 1963.
Hoepker first began taking pictures when he was                 sixteen.
His grandfather gave him an old 9/2 glass plate camera.
He developed pictures in house and began to sell some of his photos to friends and classmates.
In a few years Hoepker became a respected photographer; Magnum Photo began to publish his pictures in
1964 and he became a full member in 1989.
Thomas Hoepker's pictures are very passionate; they captured moment and action of our life that only such an artist could see.
He used say " I am not an artist, I am an image maker" 
He took all kind of pictures, black and white, colour, he added some special effect to some of them and as a World photographer he has been everywhere.
During his career his photographed many famous people like: Mohammed Ali, Andy Warhol and many others.
On 9/11, the day that America was attacked he took one of the most controversial pictures.
A group of New Yorkers sit and chatting in sunny day, while on the other side two towers in New York are burning.
In this picture these people look very calm, enjoy their day, like nothing was happening.
 This picture when first came out was banned because in that sad moment of the history, a group of American were looking the towers burning with indifference, so America could have bad publicity.
This picture was banned for years and it just came out this year.
We will never know what those people were thinking; maybe they were scared and worried just like the rest of the world.
 Thomas Hoepker took this picture, maybe he could be the only one to know what those people were discussing about and what were their feelings.