Duane Hanson: Photographs

Duane Hanson was not a great photographer. He was a great sculptor, who made uncannily naturalistic figurative sculptures of average Americans: joggers, tourists, body builders, even sunbathers that offer profound social commentary on American life. Hanson used photography, not as art in itself, but chiefly to study his subjects, as a tool for accomplishing his art. These artist “sketches” are on view for the first time ever outside New York. The exhibition “Duane Hanson: Photographs, 1977-1995,” offers a rare insight into the artist’s process as a window on his working methods and his sculptural journey into hyperrealism.

Taken with either a Polaroid or Kodak Instamatic camera, Hanson’s small-scale color photographs record people in a variety of poses, many of which were taken in the artist’s studio. Over 100 images in this exhibition represent a watershed in Hanson’s oeuvre and help structure an investigation on the relationship between photography, sculpture, art and life. Hanson, a 1951 graduate of Cranbrook Academy of Art, began making realistic sculptures in 1967 but did not introduce the Instant Camera into his artistic process until 1997. Wesla Hanson, the sculptor’s widow (Hanson died in 1996, shortly before his seventy-first birthday) says that before her husband turned to the camera he studied poses by eye and memory alone.

From 1977 on, Hanson used photography as a sketching tool for selecting gesture, posture, placement and prop. Although intended as vehicles to facilitate sculpture, the photographs possess their own magic and mystery and stand strongly and elegantly on their own.

“Hanson was not a skilled photographer in the technical sense,” says Gregory Wittkopp, Director of Cranbrook Art Museum. “But the photographs are fascinating for helping us understand the artistic process. This exhibition at Cranbrook Art Museum allows the public to view and contemplate some of the people that inspired Hanson’s monumental sculptures.”

Two sculptures by Hanson will be on display in the Museum, along with the exhibition of photographs, including: “Bodybuilder,”(1989), from the Cranbrook Art Museum Collection, and “Businessman Reading,” (1983), on loan from the Collection of Gilbert and Lila Silverman. Photographs of the models for both sculptures are included in the exhibition at Cranbrook.

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Duane Hanson: Photographs, 1977-1995
Cranbrook Art Museum