Corner of a house

Frank Hofmann was an influential photographer, both commercially and artistically, who introduced interwar European modernist ideas and practices to New Zealand. Born in Prague in 1916, Hofmann (who was Jewish) escaped to England after the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia and emigrated to Christchurch in 1940 where he established himself as a freelance photographer.

Hofmann's work explores the camera's capacity to express heightened emotions and a contemporary essence, drawing on techniques that were pivotal to the modern photography movements of the 1920s and 1930s. His images frequently employ ambiguity, a lyrical interplay of line, shape, light and shadow, strange angles, and above all a transformation of the ordinary.

Shot from a low angle, Corner of a House shows the dramatic mono-pitch roof of one of Vernon Brown’s modernist houses on Auckland’s North shore. The ‘Neville Wright house’ was commissioned by Auckland couple Neville and Betty Wright in 1942 and featured many of Brown’s signature features, including the use of creosote timber, white window frames, a sloping roof, and above all a simplicity of design.

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