From today's perspective, it sounds like a fairy tale when Thomas Hoepker speaks about the start of his America Reportage. Would you like to discover America? editor-in-chief Horst Mahnke asked one day. Sure, we said. But what exactly do you want us to do there? I think, replied the editor, you ll fly to New York and then you rent a car and you drive westward until you meet the Pacific, and then you drive back on another route and you take pictures and write about what you see. The year was 1963 and Hoepker was 27.