Evelyn Hofer, a photographer whose striking compositions in Ireland, died on Nov. 2 in Mexico City where she lived. She was 87.Working with a cumbersome four- by five-inch viewfinder camera, Ms. Hofer conjured up carefully composed and timeless images.
She remained unrecognized by most critics and curators, and never received a museum show in the US. Writers admired her and many collaborated with her, including Mary McCarthy, V. S. Pritchett and Jan Morris did in several highly regarded literary portraits of Dublin, Florence, London, New York, and Spain.
"She has an extraordinary eye for subtle differences in the quality of light and in the details of texture and shape, whether her subject is the Duomo in Florence or two young waiters in a Dublin restaurant, and she has extraordinary patience, too, in capturing from every subject the exact image she intends to wrest from it," the art critic Hilton Kramer wrote. "She is, in my opinion, one of the living masters of her medium."
The travel format led to "Dublin: A Portrait" (1967), as well as in "The Presence of Spain" (1964), by James Morris, and "The Evidence of Washington" (1966), by William Walton and "New York Proclaimed" (1965).
Girl with bicycle, Dublin 1966
One of Hofer's most famous portraits, a group of gravedigger in Dublin in 1966
Patrick Kavanagh photographed by Evelyn Hofer in O'Brien's Pub