David hoffman photographer biography

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Much hair tearing with the printers (natch) with repeated proofs and delays till we got it right.

 

And then boxes of books arrived. Then I mentioned my stalled book idea in a pro photographers’ Facebook group. It didn’t take long for me to discover that documenting the increasingly overt control of the state over our lives was what motivated me.

It shows a problem unresolved with local political and community leaders not sufficiently interested to improve the lot of the homeless.

 

East End Squatting

 

It’s hard not to be cynical; how did things get so bad?

‘Contracts were being given for new estates’ David recalls, ‘and when they were built they were crappy with high maintenance costs.

He was also the most critical, difficult and demanding designer I’ve ever worked with and I thank him from the bottom of my heart for it.

 

Stroke of luck #3, Colin Wilkinson, who’d sold his Bluecoat Press, got bored and launched new imprint Image And Reality. By engaging with the image, we are forced to recognise the world as others live it and to consider our own position.

He’d long been interested in a protest book from me, took the book on and ran a brilliant Kickstarter campaign that raised 10% over target.

 

But we didn’t yet have a book. I soon decided to run my own photo library, giving me the freedom to choose my own subject matter.

david hoffman photographer biography

Ian brought a mag-style layout and lively, engaging sequencing. Money borrowed from the City to pay for construction had to be repaid at high interest rates from the rents, leaving little for maintenance.’ Meanwhile ‘beautiful housing was being demolished – but occupation by squatters saved whole streets – still standing and highly valued today’.

 

Kingsmead Estate

Kingsmead Estate

 

The activists were vilified in the press, labelled as layabouts and unemployed – a far cry from reality.

EPUK Editorial Photographers United Kingdom and Ireland. David’s work focuses on the wider social issues while never losing its respect for people as individuals, living tough lives in tough urban landscapes.

 

Barbican 1975

 

Purchase David Hoffman’s prints – Greyscape is delighted to offer several of David’s photographs in a variety of sizes please contact us for more details 

To purchase David’s photobooks for Cafe Royal books, please visit the online shop at Greyscape.com

Dancing boy

 

More about David Hoffman – in his own words:

‘I’ve worked as an independent photojournalist since the 1970s.

The crisis was captured on TV in Cathy Come Home, a play first shown in 1966 but still resonating with the public when it was broadcast again in 1976. My work sheds what some might see as an unforgiving light across racial and social conflict, policing, drug use, poverty and social exclusion.

Protest, and the violence that sometimes accompanies it, is a thread that has run throughout my career, and at one point gained me a reputation as ‘the riot photographer’s riot photographer'.

Some find the pictures raw and uncomfortable, but my intention is to document dispassionately and let the images stand as social challenge. It’s been an at times gruelling process, but satisfying to see issues that never got mainstream coverage take their place alongside more familiar landmark moments. It didn’t take long for me to discover that documenting the increasingly overt control of the state over our lives was what motivated me.

He has photographed London’s changing East End where he squatted, and protests and riots, from the Anti-Poll Tax and Brixton riots to Slut Walks. Stroke of luck #4: a flicker of Zen illumination.

Documenting the reality of injustice, frequent state oppression and the all too often tragic consequences, my work has supported legal challenges, brought racist perpetrators to justice, and most importantly, reached wide audiences through mass media publication for more than 40 years.

Just draft layouts, dummy pages, a rough edit of scratchy low-res scans, dull prosaic captions scraped from metadata, and lorem ipsum filler text everywhere. You just get people who wander in, scratch their arses, and walk out.’

‘I don’t think the make of a camera is at all important, creatively. My work sheds what some might see as an unforgiving light across racial and social conflict, policing, drug use, poverty and social exclusion.’

 

All images are the Copyright of David Hoffman

 

 

Bio

I’ve worked as an independent photojournalist since the 1970s.