Entry Title: " African Arenas"
Name: Thomas Hoeffgen, United States
Category: Professional, Other_B


Entry Description: I was amazed at the creative use of space in Lagos, Nigeria: In a city crammed with more than 15 million residents, football was played on practically every block, with fields shoehorned into even the tiniest open areas. Empty football pitches—with their infinite possibilities—have always had a particular fascination for me. Over the next ten years, I would shoot football pitches in Nigeria, Namibia, Botswana, Zambia, Malawi, and South Africa. And though the focus always remained on the pitches—thus the title African Arenas, encompassing everything from sand lots to stadiums built for the 2010 World Cup—my initial concept quickly evolved.

Born in Kiel, Germany, Thomas Hoeffgen fell in love with photography while working on a ship full of juvenile delinquents. The job was part of his mandatory national civic service (performed in lieu of military service), and as the boat sailed around the Canary Islands Hoeffgen e livened up the situation by shooting portraits of the kids, capturing spontaneous personal moments as well as the passing scenery. This was the beginning of Hoeffgen’s pictorial relationship with movement, foreshadowing his enduring ability to record fleeting moments in a reduced, minimalistic, and cinematic style. After finishing his civic service, he moved to Spain at the age of twenty to assist the Mallorca-based art photographer Elizabeth Schäufler. Even before completing photography school, Thomas began shooting for prestigious sports clients such as Burton, Oxbow, and O’Neill, travelling all over the world to photograph advertising campaigns and capture their athletes on camera. This early work brought him into contact with fashion and advertising clients such as Timberland, Renault, Diesel, Maybelline, Escada, Laurel, Adidas, Microsoft, BMW, Swatch, Audi, Red Bull, and Camel Active, all of whom were attracted by Thomas’s laidback, carefree style and by his energy and graphic simplicity. His work has been published in magazines such as Art, Blend, British Journal of Photography, El Pais, FAZ, GQ ,Stern, SZ-Magazin, Spex, Instyle, Glamour, Elle, Marie Claire, PDN, Anglomania, Wallpaper, Zoom, NZZ, Playboy, and Outside Magazine. He has exhibited in Hamburg (Dormoolen), Duesseldorf (NRW-Forum), Munich (Goldberg Studio), Salem (Schloss Salem), Grasten (Atelier Corn Benniksgaard), Lisbon (Canon Gallery), And most recenty in Berlin’s Ausweartiges Amt and Nuernberg’s Kuenstlerhaus, both in 2010, “Traummeanner” Deichtorhallen 2011, Pavlov´s Dog Gallery Berlin 2011, Annroy Gallery London 2011 Book : Thomas Hoeffgen’s African Arenas was published in 2010 by Hatje Cantz (edited by Nadine Barth). He currently lives with his wife and daughter in Brooklyn, New York.