Frank Simon Hofmann

Frank Simon Hofmann (27 December 1916 Prague, Bohemia – 13 April 1989 Auckland, New Zealand) was a Czech photographer who was recognized for his art in both Europe and New Zealand.

Hofmann had honed his abilities as a photographer as a member of the Prague Photographic Society, acquiring the knack of both Romantic Pictorialism and modernist New Objectivity.

As a Jew, Hofmann was forced in 1940 to escape from Prague to the United Kingdom due to the rise of Nazism. He later moved to New Zealand, where he became deeply involved in Auckland’s cultural scene: friends with artist Dennis Knight Turner, writer Frank Sargeson, violinist Maurice Clare, and architect Vernon Brown.

Hofmann’s first solo show didn’t come until 1959, an exhibition at the Photographic Society of New Zealand’s Tauranga convention. There was a revival of interest in Hofmann and his work in the late 1980s as a retro icon of New Zealand modernist taste. A 1987 retrospective was mounted at Auckland’s Aberhart North Gallery. In 1989 his work featured in a nationally touring show mounted by what was then the National Art Gallery, Object & Style: Photographs from Four Decades 1930s–1960s, and again in 1992 in the Auckland Art Gallery’s The 1950s Show.