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 Manuela Höfer
born in 1965 in Jena/Thüringen, former East Germany
Through apprenticeships in a black & white lab and a portrait & advertising studio, she mastered traditional printing
techniques and learned how to make her darkroom experimentation appealing to a wider audience. This innovation carried her
through a Bachelor of Arts degree at the Prague Academy and earned her the Hasselblad Fine Art Award in 1995 for a series of
nudes.
Höfer's understanding of an audience's demands encouraged her to expand the market for photography, beginning with her
own work. What began in 1996 as a small stall at an antique arcade in Chelsea has since grown into a gallery and shop - The
Hofer Printroom in Bloomsbury. The focus of the first half of her career has been on building bridges between artist and
audience. With this goal in mind, she conceived and organised the 1997 London Contemporary Photography Fair at the Strand
Palace Hotel, which was such a success that it demanded encores in 1998 and 1999, and later expanded to Berlin in 2001 and
2002.
While she was orchestrating these events, Höfer's interest in her own photography never faded, and to date she has
completed nearly a dozen photography projects. Throughout her career, she has sustained the ability to renew her approach to
everyday subjects. She is best known for her experimental photogram series "Wrapped", which documents disposable commercial
packaging, and her "Urban Perspectives" series, which captures the peace and chaos of city life.
Urban Perspectives: Manuela Höfer found surprising new angles and juxtapositions, viewpoints and
perspectives that expressed her excitement and enjoyment of the city. She has since developed this graphic and unusual style
in the cities of London, Paris, Berlin and Chicago, and on return visits to New York City.
These visits have generated a remarkable black and white archive, which is now known not only to collectors of photography
but also to the principal picture libraries who license many of her images. Her list of publications is extensive and ranges
from book covers to advertising and even a Hollywood movie.
The progress of the project was marked in 2003 by the publication by 'Kunst und Bild' of her first book - 'Urban
Perspectives', in conjunction with a solo exhibition at Berlin's Galerie Pernkopf. A larger solo exhibition of the work was
shown at the German Embassy in London in 2004.
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