Vijf gezichten op Wenen, gezien vanaf de Stephansdom 1930 - 1931

This is Berti Hoppe’s, Vijf gezichten op Wenen, gezien vanaf de Stephansdom, five monochrome photographs mounted onto card. The prints are quite small, like snapshots, but they give a great view. There's a really interesting tension in these photographs, between the formal composition of each shot, and the looseness of the whole page. The different viewpoints create a kind of spatial disorientation, like the feeling when you wake up in a new place and nothing is quite where you expect it to be. My eye keeps going back to the photograph labeled "Turmfassade", because the angle of the shot creates a series of receding triangles and gives an abstract feeling. This interest in abstraction reminds me of the work of Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, who was also making experimental photographs around the same time. Like Moholy-Nagy, Hoppe seems to be exploring the possibilities of the photographic medium. These photographs are not about capturing a scene but about seeing what the camera can really do.