Gifted a camera by his grandfather as a boy, Thomas Hoepker had an interest in photography from the age of 14. Born in Munich in 1936, he studied art history and archeology at university and worked as a photographer for Münchner Illustrierte and Kristall between 1960 and 1963. His job at Kristall took him reporting from all over the world. One of Hoepker’s early, major photo stories for them was made on a road trip across the USA and inspired by Robert Frank’s The Americans.
Hoepker joined Stern magazine as a photo-reporter in 1964, the same year that Magnum began to distribute his archive. He worked as cameraman and producer of documentary films for German television in 1972, and from 1974 collaborated with his first wife, the journalist Eva Windmoeller, first in East Germany and then in New York, where they moved to work as correspondents for Stern in 1976. From 1978 to 1981 Hoepker was director of photography for the American edition of Geo.
Hoepker took one of the most memorable images of a singularly defining event in the history of the 21st Century: a shot of young people relaxing on 9/11 as the World Trade Center burns behind them, which has come to symbolize much of the allegorical power of photography. Hoepker published it 5 years after the event — he had initially decided to hold back on sharing the image, wishing to respect the solemnity of the atmosphere immediately following the attacks, but it was the subject of much comment when he agreed to its use in a book about photographs of 9/11 in 2006. “Mr. Hoepker's photo is prescient as well as important — a snapshot of history soon to come,” wrote Frank Rich in The New York Times.
In the late 1960s, Elliott Erwitt invited Hoepker to become part of Magnum as a member of the collective. Though Hoepker had been an admirer of Erwitt’s work, he declined, as he was engaged in work with Stern. It was to be around two decades later, in 1989 that Hoepker would finally leave Stern and take on the opportunity to join Magnum, where he was to become president in 2003. On the subject of running an agency with his fellow photographers, he said, “It’s not easy, because we have to deal with big egos of big photographers. But it’s worth it.”
Hoepker made a beloved series on a sports and pop-cultural titan, Muhammad Ali. Across two extraordinary visits to Ali in London and Chicago, Hoepker and his wife Eva Windmoeller followed the boxer as he prepared for a fight and trained on his home turf. Hoepker’s portrait of the fighter jumping atop a bridge on the Chicago River became iconic, but was the result of spontaneous improvisation between the two, rather than being premeditated. Hoepker reflected on Ali’s playful character: “Ali could be widely alert, sharp and observant, he loved to saunter down the streets, to banter with real people. He melted away when he saw children. They adored him, he hugged them, he did some shadow-boxing and then he took sudden naps in the backseat of his chauffeured Lincoln sedan.”
Throughout the time he was employed as a news photographer, he always saw himself as a journalist. It was only after becoming a member of Magnum that he began to recognize the role of the artist within that of the photographer. “A truly strong photojournalistic image is a reproduction of reality, nothing about it can be faked,” he said, “But today, there’s more room for interpretation of reality by the photographer: style, eye and aesthetic all matter. Even at Magnum, everyone has to make his own decisionon how far he wants to go in presenting reality through his own eyes.”
Hoepker’s work published in books includes a portrait of East Germany spanning over 3 decades and an investigation of the lives and beliefs of Maya communities in Guatemala. His reportage and features in color revealed to many the alluring landscapes and scenery of America, Japan, China and many other places around the world. He also photographed revered artists such as Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein. Hoepker received the prestigious Kulturpreis of the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Photographie in 1968.
In 1976 Hoepker moved to New York. Later in his career, he shot and produced TV documentaries together with his second wife, Christine Kruchen. A retrospective exhibition, showing 230 images from fifty years of work, toured Germany and other parts of Europe in 2007.
Thomas passed away in 2024.