Austin Hansen
Austin Victor Hansen was a notable photographer born in 1910 in St. Thomas, Danish West Indies. He began his photography journey at a young age, developing a passion for portraiture while apprenticing in a local studio. Hansen moved to New York at eighteen but faced significant racial prejudice that hindered his career initially. Despite these challenges, he found success as a photographer, particularly in Harlem, where he documented a wide range of subjects, from everyday citizens to prominent figures such as Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr.
Hansen owned a studio in Harlem from 1940 to 1986 and contributed to various publications, capturing the essence of African American life and culture during a time of both celebration and struggle. His work transcended celebrity portraits; he also chronicled social events and political gatherings, serving as the official photographer for the Abyssinian Baptist Church for over four decades. Hansen's legacy is significant, as his extensive body of work provides a rich visual history of the African American community in Harlem, showcasing its diversity and resilience against the backdrop of racial adversity. His dedication to photography continued until his health declined in the late 1980s, and he later contributed to teaching the craft to younger generations.
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Subject Terms
Austin Hansen
Photographer
- Born: 1910
- Birthplace: St. Thomas, Danish West Indies (now in United States Virgin Islands)
- Died: January 23, 1996
- Place of death: New York, New York
Best known for his candid portraits of Harlem’s teeming social life taken from the mid-1940’s to the mid-1960’s, Hansen led a career devoted to capturing the essential facts of black American life. Taken in the black churches, nightclubs, and homes of Harlem, his photographs document its vibrancy and activity, providing contemporary audiences with records of rich moments in Harlem’s cultural past.
Early Life
In 1910, Austin Victor Hansen was born in St. Thomas, Danish West Indies, to Felix and Amy Taylor Raimer Hansen. With a Hawkeye camera made of cardboard and imitation leather, Hansen began taking portraits of his relatives at age twelve. He came to master the genre of studio portraiture (using sunlight exclusively) as an apprentice in the photography studio of Clarence Taylor. Displaying a technical virtuosity similar to that of his teacher and mentor, Hansen’s photographs of the St. Thomas landscape reveal a keen attention to the rich variety and subtle schemes of the picturesque Virgin Islands. Later on, a naval officer, F. A. Dibling, hired Hansen as a photographer.
In 1928, Hansen left the islands for New York at the age of eighteen. Although he brought with him a reference from Dibling, he found it difficult to get work because of the fierce limitations imposed by racial prejudice. As a result, Hansen took on a variety of menial jobs to support himself. He also assumed a few extracurricular pursuits that included playing drums for local bands sponsored by the Works Progress Administration, eventually enabling him to play for larger bands in the New York area. His drumming education had begun in the Virgin Islands, where he listened to military band recitals at the Emancipation Garden. However, despite his interest in music, he held fast to his passion for photography, always keeping his camera on hand. At age nineteen, Hansen sold his first photograph—a picture of a young black woman singing for President Franklin D. Roosevelt one night at the Essex Hotel—to The New York Amsterdam News. This sale marked the beginning of Hansen’s career, which would flourish for the next six decades.
Life’s Work
During the Depression years, Hansen began to study art and photograph subjects in local nightclubs with the assistance of his younger brother Aubrey. From 1940 to 1986, he owned and operated a studio on West 135th Street in Harlem, where he worked continuously with the exception of a couple of brief stints as a Navy photographer’s mate—a job usually denied African American enlistees—during World War II and as a darkroom technician for the Office of War Information. However, the majority of Hansen’s career was spent capturing Harlem’s great figures, fraternal orders, and architectural structures while freelancing for newspapers such as The New York Amsterdam News and The Pittsburgh Courier.
In later years, Hansen also photographed political giants such as Malcolm X and Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., and an array of dignitaries and celebrities who visited Harlem. Among them were Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia, the Queen Mother of England, Marian Anderson, Henry Belafonte, educator Mary McLeod Bethune, Bill “Bojangles” Robinson, Joe Louis, and a young Martin Luther King, Jr. Musical pioneers such as Lena Horne, Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Ella Fitzgerald, Eartha Kitt, and the Nicholas brothers and future film stars including Billy Dee Williams and a young Leslie Uggams also were captured through his lens. A selection of these photographs was displayed in Hansen’s Harlem, an exhibition held at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in 1989. However, Hansen did not record celebrities exclusively; he also photographed social events and political rallies that brought Harlem’s residents and visitors together.
Hansen served as the official photographer for the Abyssinian Baptist Church for more than forty years, and he documented events at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine with Aubrey, who predeceased him, for more than twenty years. Because of failing health, Hansen closed his studio in 1986. Before he died a decade later, he served as the resident artist at the Photographic Center of Harlem, a nonprofit school that teaches photography to children, young adults, and the elderly. He lived in West Harlem and was survived by his wife of fifty-three years, Lillian, and their two sons.
Significance
Hansen recorded decades of vibrant African American life in Harlem, capturing his subjects with dignity and stunning grace in the face of daunting racial prejudice. Hansen’s photographs visualize a vast spectrum of black figures, ranging from powerful politicians to common civilians, revealing an African American community rich and diverse in character and profession, putting black stereotypes to shame. His comprehensive body of images of Harlem architecture, churches, and social and educational organizations, as well as street scenes and communal celebrations, provides contemporary audiences with a visual historiography of black Harlem life. Ultimately, Hansen’s photographs demonstrate the triumph of black life in the face of fierce adversity and racial prejudice, revealing complex relationships between extraordinary black individuals and the city that brought them together.
Bibliography
Van Gelder, Lawrence. “Austin Hansen, Visual Chronicler of Harlem Life, Dies at 85.” The New York Times, January 25, 1996. This obituary recounts the highlights of Hansen’s life, work, and career.
Willis, Deborah. Reflections in Black: A History of Black Photographers, 1840 to the Present. New York: W. W. Norton, 2000. This is an important reference for any study of Hansen’s milieu. Well illustrated.
Willis, Deborah, and Rodger C. Birt. Hansen’s Harlem. New York: Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, 1989. This exhibition catalog, published in support of a retrospective of Hansen’s work held at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in New York, features two historical texts on the artist’s work and life and several black-and-white illustrations of his photography.