The masterful industrial image-making of Hans Hansen – in all its elements

Hans Hansen is just not essentially well-known to anybody however probably the most studious of photographic historians. All through 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 fashionable inventive actions, leading to a few of the most putting and memorable product photos of the Nineteen Seventies, Eighties and past.

Curated by Dr Esther Ruelfs, Claire Müller and Justus Brinckmann, ‘Picture: Hans Hansen’ is a large-scale retrospective of Hansen’s work, a set of 220 pictures that cowl each side of a six-decade profession. Hansen’s purchasers have included manufacturers reminiscent of Volkswagen, Kodak, Erco, Nikon and Lufthansa.

In unskilled arms, his stark compositions and use of sunshine and shadow would create stark, lifeless imagery, however in some way, Hansen ekes out the playful and the sudden, creating photos which have shaped the guts of influential campaigns within the course of.

Born in Bielefeld in 1940, Hans Hansen studied lithography and Utilized Graphics on the Düsseldorf Artwork 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 inventive device, half knowledgeable by the period’s rediscovery and rehabilitation of the Bauhaus and different fashionable actions. That is photographic minimalism, to make certain, however it’s additionally technically exact.

Among the many photos on show are his seminal imaginative and prescient of the 1988 Volkswagen Golf, dismantled into 6,843 constituent elements. This promoting {photograph} was truly an replace of an earlier marketing campaign for the VW Beetle, a part of the ‘Assume Small’ collection commissioned by the pioneering New York advert company Doyle Dane Bernbach.

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 items. He was capable of deploy the sudden use of color to spotlight type and model, taking automobile pictures away from its severe, quasi-scientific roots.

His work for Lufthansa was paired with the typography of Otl Aicher, showcasing the perfect in German creativity. Different specialities included the usage of abstracted collection, particularly for the work finished for lighting producer Erco, in addition to meals pictures and his personal private initiatives, together with the latest, Analog.

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.