Hank Gans

Biography

Hank Gans became a successful commercial photographer in 1975, working for high profile corporate clients such as AT&T, Ciba Geigy, Kodak, Merrill Lynch, Johnson & Johnson and Barclay’s and First Union Banks. Over the years he has won many New York and Chicago Art Directors Club awards and his work has been featured several times in Photographis, the Swiss annual of the “world’s best advertising and editorial photography”. Encouraged by his mentor, the greatcolour photographer, Ernst Haas, who had declared Hank’s personal work “perfection”, Hank left Manhattan in 1985 to photograph the American southwest. He lived with the Hopi Tribe at Keams Canyon, Arizona, becoming the first “Anglo” photographer to be permitted to live with the tribe since it banned photography on the reservation in 1911. Hank chose this locality because the Hopi Mesas are the centre of the Four Corners area which was the focal point of his photography. Hank became a member of the Hopi community, teaching photography at Northland Pioneer College on the reservation. Earning the trust of the tribe, Hank was commissioned by many Hopi tribal members to do their portraits. After three years in the mile high desert, Hank left the Hopi mesas to settle in coastal Maine. In 1993 he was the stills photographer for a feature film being shot on location on Cape Cod. Solving a logistic problem for a producer brought about his becoming production manager of the feature and, eventually, one of its producers. The film won several international film festivals in 1994. This led to additional production work for other films in Hollywood, California. Hank’s total involvement in film production during this time drew him away from photography as a profession and an art. In 2000 his love for still photography and marriage to his wife, Nicole, brought Hank back to the New York area where he re-established himself as a commercial and fine art photographer and continues his exploration of the world through his colour photography.