Hans Hansen is just not essentially well-known to anybody however probably the most studious of photographic historians. Throughout an extended profession, the self-taught German photographer has quietly carved a distinct segment as a grasp of nonetheless life and industrial image-making. His work explores color and composition, in addition to drawing classes from trendy creative actions, leading to a few of the most putting and memorable product pictures of the Nineteen Seventies, Nineteen Eighties and past.
Hans Hansen, images for Nikon, 1985
(Image credit score: Hans Hansen / Nikon)
Curated by Dr Esther Ruelfs, Claire Müller and Justus Brinckmann, ‘Photo: Hans Hansen’ is a large-scale retrospective of Hansen’s work, a set of 220 images that cowl each side of a six-decade profession. Hansen’s shoppers have included manufacturers equivalent to Volkswagen, Kodak, Erco, Nikon and Lufthansa.
In unskilled arms, his stark compositions and use of sunshine and shadow would create stark, lifeless imagery, however someway, Hansen ekes out the playful and the sudden, creating pictures which have shaped the center of influential campaigns within the course of.
Hans Hansen, images for Kodak
(Image credit score: Hans Hansen)
Born in Bielefeld in 1940, Hans Hansen studied lithography and Applied Graphics on the Düsseldorf Art Academy, though he by no means graduated. Working with a medium-format Rolleiflex digicam, Hansen started his profession with a collaboration capturing the Finnish designer Tapio Wirkkala’s glass collaborations with Iittala.
Hansen used the digicam as a compositional and artistic instrument, half knowledgeable by the period’s rediscovery and rehabilitation of the Bauhaus and different trendy actions. This is photographic minimalism, to make certain, however it’s additionally technically exact.
One of Hansen’s glass collages
(Image credit score: Hans Hansen)
Among the pictures on show are his seminal imaginative and prescient of the 1988 Volkswagen Golf, dismantled into 6,843 constituent elements. This promoting {photograph} was really an replace of an earlier marketing campaign for the VW Beetle, a part of the ‘Think Small’ collection commissioned by the pioneering New York advert company Doyle Dane Bernbach.
A 1970 advert picture for Volkswagen by Hans Hansen
(Image credit score: Hans Hansen)
Working with the deep-pocketed auto trade – he additionally labored for Porsche, Mercedes-Benz and Fiat – additionally helped Hansen purchase studio house and expertise, together with customized flash models. He was capable of deploy the sudden use of color to focus on kind and model, taking automotive images away from its critical, quasi-scientific roots.
Mercedes-Benz SL, photographed in 1989
(Image credit score: Hans Hansen)
His work for Lufthansa was paired with the typography of Otl Aicher, showcasing the easiest in German creativity. Other specialities included the usage of abstracted collection, particularly for the work executed for lighting producer Erco, in addition to meals images and his personal private initiatives, together with the newest, Analog.
A collection of light-shaped nonetheless lives for Erco
(Image credit score: Hans Hansen)
The Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg manages Hans Hansen’s 10,000-strong slide archive, in addition to his private assortment of artwork glass, documentation and correspondence. The exhibition is a uncommon alternative to revisit the work of this pioneering photographer.
‘Photo: Hans Hansen’ is at MKG Hamburg from 17 April to 1 November 2026.
For extra info, go to MKG-Hamburg.de, @MKGhamburg, Hansen.Works
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