'34 FORMAN HANNA Photograph-TEWA-Native American Indian-TESUQUE PUEBLO Mission
NOTE: Shipping includes secure packaging and full insurance. This photo will be significantly cheaper to ship if I remove it from the frame and ship without the frame and glass.
DIMENSIONS:
Frame: 20 1/2" x 16 1/2" x 3/4".
Photo: 13 1/2" x 10 1/2".
Total weight: 4 lbs.
DESCRIPTION:
Large original photograph by Arizona photographer FORMAN HANNA (1882-1950).
Gelatin silver print on paper mounted on original studio mount. Matted under glass in its original simple painted wood frame.
Signed in pencil on the mount lower right: "F. Hanna FRPS". Also in pencil on mount: "London Salon, 1934" (apparently this photo was exhibited).
The photo is not titled but I have identified the image as a Tewa woman at the door of the Mission church, Tesuque Pueblo (near Santa Fe, NM). (This church was destroyed by fire in 2000.)
CONDITION:
Not inspected out of frame. There is no evidence the photo has ever been removed from this frame.
MAT:
There is some light even toning to the mat board.
There are what appear to be a couple of scattered small faint smudges to the mat board. It is possible these could be cleaned if the photo were removed from frame and the inside of the glass cleaned, etc.
There is some very faint water staining to the very bottom edge of the mat board right side (just above the frame).
Consult photos. None of this is terribly conspicuous.
PHOTO AND MOUNT:
The photo and mount are in excellent original condition. No damages and no wear. No restorations.
No scratches, tears, stains, creases, dings, gouges. No noticeable toning to the mount or photo. No mat burn.
FRAME, ETC. :
There is some handling wear to the frame: scattered scratches, rubs and scuffs. Consult photos.
Minor separations at frame corners.
The paper seal on back of the frame has broken with age.
Otherwise the frame is in good condition with no damages and no significant wear. No restorations.
No cracks, breaks, splits. No significant dents or dings.
No damage to the glass.
ARTIST BIOGRAPHIES:
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Photographer and pharmacist, Globe, Arizona, Forman Hanna was internationally known for his pictorial-style photography. His photographs were exhibited nationally and internationally including exhibits in New York, Washington, D.C., London, Glasgow and Paris. Forman Hanna was born in Anson, Texas in 1882. In 1904, Hanna moved to Globe, Arizona accepting a job with the Palace Pharmacy. He later bought the business and operated it until his retirement in 1946. With Globe as his base, he made many photography trips into the Indian country of Arizona, New Mexico and Utah. He was primarily active as a photographer from 1912 to 1937. He died in April 1950.
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Forman Hanna
Name: Forman Hanna
Also Known as: Forman Gordon Hanna
Born Anson, TX 1882-died Los Angeles, CA 1950
Active in: Globe, Arizona
Nationalities: American
Raised in a small Texas town, Hanna had his first encounters with photography and most of his art training through camera-club magazines. Emulating the Pictorialist style, he used his western surroundings as subject matter.
While working as a pharmacist in Globe, Arizona, Hanna made frequent trips to nearby canyons and Pueblo villages to photograph what the believed was a lost way of life. Recognized for his Arizona landscapes, he often exhibited in the juried shows of camera clubs. In the years just following World War I, these organizations provided an important forum for many of the nation's artistic photographers like Hanna. Although they lived in different parts of the country, these photographers attained a collective identity.
Merry A. Foresta American Photographs: The First Century (Washington, D.C.: National Museum of American Art with the Smithsonian Institution Press, 1996)
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Names: Other: Forman Hanna
Dates: 1881, 21 December - 1950, 20 April
Born: US, MO, Windsor
Died: US, CA, Los Angeles
Active: US
American pictorialist photographer.
Approved biography for Forman G. Hanna (Courtesy of Christian Peterson)
Hanna exhibited his pictorial prints for forty years, beginning in the mid-1910s. Based in Globe, Arizona, he made photographs of Native Americans, the southwestern landscape, and female nudes. His vocation was that of a pharmacist.
Forman Gordon Hanna was born in Windsor, Missouri, on December 21, 1881. He grew up on his father’s cattle farm near Anson, Texas, and graduated from the Galveston School and University in 1904 with a pharmacy degree. He soon landed a job in Globe, Arizona, at the Palace Pharmacy, which he later bought and ran until retirement.
Hanna acquired his first camera as a child. After seeing reproductions of creative photographs, he began reading monthly photographic magazines to teach himself the technique of pictorial photography. His pictures first appeared as prizewinners in the monthly competitions of American Photography from 1913 to 1915.
By the late 1910s, his photographs were being accepted at national exhibitions in San Francisco and Los Angeles. He continued to consistently exhibit in salons until the early 1940s, showing up to fifty prints a year. He was also honored with one-person exhibitions, in 1923 and 1928 at the Camera Club of New York, and about the same time at the Art Center (New York). His last solo show occurred in 1948 at the Brooklyn Museum, which he traveled east to see.
Hanna was involved with various influential pictorial groups. He was a council member of the Pictorial Photographers of America shortly after its founding and a regional vice-president in the late 1920s. In 1933, he was honored with fellowship status in England’s Royal Photographic Society (FRPS), and a year later he became a charter member of the Photographic Society of America.
Hanna’s choice of subject matter reflected his lifelong residence in Arizona. He frequently turned his camera on the Native Americans of the Southwest, idealizing the lifestyle of the Apache, Navajo, and Hopi tribes. He was also accomplished at picturing female nudes, which he classically posed in the area’s natural surroundings; he wrote an article on the subject for the April 1935 issue of Camera Craft. In addition, he produced pure landscapes, repeatedly photographing the state’s peaks, deserts, and canyons with an eye toward light and shade, rather than topographical documentation.
In 1946, Hanna sold his drugstore and retired. His pictorial output had slowed by this time, and he made his last photographic trip, to the Grand Canyon, in 1949. A year later, after three months of poor health, he went to Los Angeles for medical care and died at the Good Samaritan Hospital, on April 20, 1950.
Christian A. Peterson Pictorial Photography at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts (Christian A. Peterson: Privately printed, 2012)
This biography is courtesy and copyright of Christian Peterson and is included here with permission.
Date last updated: 1 June 2013.
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Contributed by Arizona State Museum:
This exhibit of twenty-seven Forman Hanna photographs from the Arizona State Museum's collection showcases the tradition of pictorial photography as practiced in the early twentieth century by photographers in the American West. Native Americans, cowboys and scenic landscapes were some of Forman Hanna's favorite subjects.
Hanna came to Arizona in 1904 and through a friend found a position as a pharmacist in Globe, Arizona. Globe's proximity to the native people and landscapes that he wanted to photograph kept him there for the remainder of his life, although he traveled widely in Arizona, New Mexico, Utah and Texas.
Hanna's photographs of Apache, Navajo, Hopi and Acoma Indians, as presented here, are set in their villages and surroundings and document their ways of life and the native architecture of the early to mid 1900's. Many of his photographs of native peoples were candid shots where he sought to capture aspects of quotidian Native American life. This demonstrates his desire to preserve the way of life of these Native peoples as well as how interesting he found their lifestyles.
Hanna also documented the cowboys' lifestyle as he feared it would soon disappear altogether. Cattle drives, horsemanship and even the picturesque attire of the cowboys were aspects of the cowboy of the early 20th century that Hanna strived to preserve through his photographs.