Bradley Hanson Photography

My connection to photography began at age 10 when my parents brought back a beautiful Voigtlander Vitomatic camera from Germany. This little silver metal box was magic to me. Upon receiving my first roll of film back from the lab, I was instantly addicted to the alchemy of light coming through glass, hitting plastic film and becoming an image through a specific recipe of chemicals. A few years later, I began printing in the darkroom when I was the photographer for my high school newspaper and yearbook. By seeking out books, I studied the photography of the Magnum Agency masters like Henri Cartier-Bresson, Josef Koudelka and Elliott Erwitt, but it was the seemingly random act of buying the Ralph Gibson “Tropism” at the Walker Art Center bookshop in 1988 that immediately electrified my imagination about the compositional and emotional energy of black and white imagery. I started photograping head shots for model portfolios and for promotional portraits and cover images for musicians, then shooting for the Seattle weekly papers, shooting everything from city council meetings and mayoral press conferences to restaurant reviews and local human interest stories. It was through these experiences that I realized I love photographing people.