Interview with Mark Hanauer

By Daniel Rolnik On October 7, 2011

Mark Hanauer is an incredible photographer who currently has a solo show at The Huntington in Pasadena. While Mark has taken some of the most iconic images of all time as a commercial photographer for Rolling Stone, Forbes, and countless other publications, this show is about reinvention and an entirely new body of work. I have the utmost respect for Mark for taking the risk to go after a personal project and make it happen.

DR: When did you begin photographing flowers?

MH: The flower series started when I did a set of packages for Strange Invisible Perfumes. It was a very important job with the great designer, Tracey Shiffman, and a very interesting client, Alexandra Balahoutis. I felt this pressure to do something different for them and I ended up discovering a way to shoot the flowers where they looked impressionistic using light in the studio…She calls her new office in Venice The Hanauer Museum because my photographs are hanging up all over the place.

DR: Are they the same images that are going to be in your exhibit at the Huntington Gardens?

MH: The images I shot for her are totally different than the ones in my personal series. Everything in my series is shot with natural light and everything for her was shot in a studio with a white backdrop and artificial light.

DR: How did you transition the project into being a personal series?

MH: There’s a really interesting story about that. I got inspired to go out when the job was over and shoot some more flowers, because it was almost more fun than any other project I had worked on. I thought the photos turned out super nice, but I put them away and didn’t think about them since I just considered them an exercise at the time. Then one night I was teaching a class at UCLA and I invited my friend David Strick, a wonderful photographer that I have known for years, to come speak. He was talking about reinvention in this time where everything is changing so rapidly and I was getting totally anxious listening to him.

DR: Did you place these water droplets on the plant?

MH: No, it was shot on a day after a rain storm. It’s interesting because if the water comes from a sprinkler the water drops are not as big. This image reminds me of jewels.

DR: Why was his lecture making you so anxious?

MH: I was anxious because all I had done over the course of my career was repackage my work, but I had never reinvented myself. I would make different portfolios, but they would have the same images…He and I had a conversation on the street for another hour after his lecture, then I sped home at 11:30pm, ran to my office, and started making large prints of the Huntington flowers. This, I soon realized was my re-invention.

DR: It is a total reinvention, it’s colorful, it’s bright. Do you even care about doing portraits anymore?

MH: I love doing portraits.

DR: So you like both?

MH: I love photography. I still look at a lot of photographer’s work. I grew up admiring photographers like Richard Avedon, Irving Penn, Guy Bourdin, Helmut Newton, and Javier Vallhonrat.

DR: What is that little white line in the black area of the photograph?

MH: It is a little web. If this image was taken with a film camera I would have thought that’s a scratch on the film, but with digital cameras I know that it’s part of the picture.

DR: Are you still teaching photography at UCLA?

MH: I only taught a few semesters because I felt like I was on stage and that made me feel uncomfortable. I love doing mentorships with one or two people who I know really take photography seriously, but there were people in the class who just wanted to take better travel photographs and I couldn’t relate to that. It was a non-technical class called Photographing in the Moment. I would have my students do things like go into rooms that they were really comfortable with and just spend a couple hours with their cameras finding things that they had never seen before – which is extremely similar to how I do my work.

DR: How did you go about arranging an exhibit at The Huntington Gardens?

MH: After two months of shooting flowers at The Huntington Gardens I sent an email to Jim Folsom the head of the botanical gardens. He really liked my work and invited me to an event for another photographer on the grounds. Some time passed and I met with Judy Plunkett at The Huntington. Judy invited Jim Folsom over to view the work and he said, “let’s have a show!”

DR: How long ago was that?

MH: That was last November and now it’s finally happening. It was a real kick in the butt because it gave me validation for the images.

DR: Was this shot at nighttime?

MH: No, what’s black is actually green in reality, but as I exposed for the highlights the green turns black because it’s underexposed.

DR: How long have you been working on the flower series?

MH: A little over a year now.

DR: What camera did you use?

MH: Canon 5D Mark III. I tried using a Hasselblad in the beginning, but it was too heavy – since I do everything freehand without a tripod. I use a 100mm macro lens.

DR: So you weren’t using a lens baby on the camera to get those crazy focuses?

MH: The images are actually very faithful to the RAW files I shoot. All I do in Photoshop is take out a little bit of color, because digital photography tends to be a little over saturated. In fact, I did less to the flower photos than I do to my commercial work where I have to retouch.

DR: I thought you smeared something on the lens to get that effect haha…

MH: God no, I don’t smear.

DR: Is this a flower?

MH: It’s a leaf from a flax plant. It’s the center of one of the blades. Nothing is in focus in this picture, which I really love and it just becomes this iconic sort of thing. I actually love shooting the peonies more than anything though.

DR: Why?

MH: The way they blossom is just incredible. They start out like these orb type shapes and then unfold over a long period.

DR: How many photos will you want to be in the series for it to be considered complete?

MH: I want to have 100 images of flowers that I really love. I’d love to do a book. I probably have about 38 or 40 images that I like so far, which were narrowed down out of thousands of photographs.

DR: Are all the flowers photographed at the Huntington Gardens?

MH: Some are from my backyard, others from The Huntington, the flower mart, and the farmer’s market. When I shoot at home I can move the flowers around in the early morning sunlight that comes through my window, which can work really well.

DR: Do you take a million photographs or just focus on one?

MH: Even when I do commercial jobs, I can’t take tons of photographs. What’s more important to me than shooting a thousand pictures and finding the best one is really having a clear vision while I’m working. If I’m photographing a person I want to keep the tempo up because I don’t want my subject (or myself) to get bored, so I tend to work very quickly. It’s all in the in the moment. When I know I have the shot, I’ll start to play. Play is very important in my work.

DR: What do you mean by saying play is essential to your work?

MH: You know when you were a kid on your back looking up at the clouds and you would see animals start to form? That’s the way my images are to me. I look at the flowers and I find things that excite me. Maybe it’s an interesting design or something sensual, a body part, a face, or a shape that reminds me of something else.