Typologies or the study of people of different ethnic “types” and cultures was a popular amateur pursuit of the late 19th century. Underlying such examination was the presumption that the observing society was the norm and all “others” were the exotics but that was the established view amongst most of the educated middle to upper class in 19th century London. One of the benefits of photography and especially that of the newly available hand-held camera brought to typological studies at that time was the ability to make instantaneous records of these “exotic” peoples.

In 1916 George Bernard Shaw experimented on the subject of human typology with his play Pygmalion, a story about Eliza Doolittle, a London Cockney flower girl who phonetics Professor Henry Higgins wagered he could retrain in language and social behavior in order to pass her off as a high society debutante. At the core of this experiment is the historic debate over how we become who we are, are we influenced more by nature or by the nurture of our socio-cultural environment.

By the late teens Hoppé had spent over a decade making portrait photographs of Britain’s high society. Perhaps to challenge his skills as with Professor Higgins, Hoppé began making portraits of London’s street types. English charladies, maids, and market sellers were at first brought into his studio and photographed. Later he sought them on the street. In 1922 he published a group of these studies in his book, Taken From Life with text by J. D. Beresford and again in 1926 the made a second book, London Types; Taken from Life with texts W. Pett Ridge. In the sprit of G. B. Shaw’s experiment, Hoppé continued a lifelong interest in making portraits of the ordinary working man and woman in each of the diverse cultures he encountered.

An interesting aside is that Shaw’s Pygmalion later became the highly successful musical My Fair Lady. It’s set and costume design was created by another photographer, Cecil Beaton, who had directly modeled the style of his photographic career on that of E. O. Hoppé.