E.O. Hoppé - a history of photography in one person

I went to National Portrait Gallery to see the works of E.O. Hoppé (1878-1972):

http://www.npg.org.uk:8080/hoppe/index.html

I have just come back from Berlin, where his works were shown as well in Berlinische Galerie:

http://www.berlinischegalerie.de/index.php?id=1045&L=1

Coinsidence? I don't think so.

The sekections of works were very different in both galleries. Berlin presents more of his type portraits and city landscapes. London shows his work with ballet dancers, portraits of famous people and women and late street photographs.
So, what I found intersting for myself (and that's the reason I have decided to make this post here):

1. What a great photographer he was and how forgotten he is.

2. I never heard of him in context of Djagilev's ballet seasons. He used to work a lot with them and keep taking portraits of leading dancers:

(he even hand-painted some photos!!! - another click with my interests)

2. I loved his not-sharp portraits made in 1900-1920s with large format. You usually expect some certain sharpness from these cameras and even the chemical processes were developed already to achieve stable results. But his photographs somehow look different for me, including series 'fair women':


3. I like the curatorial work on this show - the selection which was made and how it is presented goes through the history or technical progress of photography in 20th century. His early works are all on large format, after you can see he was using medium format and his subjects are now live/work/perform outside of the studio space:


And after 1940s, when 35mm cameras were invented, his angle and subject was radically changed and most of photos started to have a snapshot aesthtics which was inaccessible earlier.