Fred Hoefler

Photographer/Historic Photo Restoration

Fred's passion for photography started in the early 1970's when he took a course on photography on a whim while in high school. This interest in black and white fine art landscape photography continued through the years until a move to medium format in the early 1990's. There his fascination with the subtleness of tone and texture only found, up until then, in medium and large format films focused his work with landscapes. Along with his work with larger format films arose a further interest with 19th century photographic processes. The use of different negative and printing materials lent a "permanence" not found with the popular "snapshot" photography found in todays photo albums and media.

Several of Fred's images have won awards at regional and statewide art shows in Washington and Alaska.

Improvements with digital media along with difficulty in obtaining materials and chemicals for traditional photography started forcing a change to digital photography in 2009. Along with the move was a discovery that older film media, that was at one time considered to be "unsalvageable" using traditional photographic media and techniques, were now restorable within reasonable time and material constraints. This discovery not only expanded his printable negative inventory but allowed Fred to restore some unique photographs of the final days of working Yukon River Sternwheeler riverboats recorded by his parents.

Fred is currently publishing a book of his restorative work on the Yukon riverboats and spends much of his time collaborating with his artist wife and son on various projects.

fhoefler@cbnn.net