Forman Gordon Hanna US Vintage Photographer

[Glamourtog]

Based in Globe, Arizona, Forman Hanna made photographs of Native Americans, the southwestern landscape, and female nudes.
Forman Gordon Hanna was born in Missouri in1881. He grew up on his father’s 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.
After seeing reproductions of creative photographs, he began 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. He continued to consistently exhibit in salons until the early 1940s, and 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.

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 1946, Hanna sold his drugstore and retired. He died on April 20, 1950.
In 1985, a large survey of his work opened at the University of Arizona, in Tucson.