Heinrich Hamann (photographer)

Heinrich Hamann (born July 25, 1883 in Danzig ; † May 26, 1975 in Hamburg ) was a German photographer .

Life

Heinrich Hamann was born in Danzig as the son of the photographer Johann Hamann . He attended the Selekta at the Neustädter Strasse school in Hamburg. He then completed his professional training as a photographer in his father's studio. From 1902 to 1905 he did his military service and photographed typical motifs from the lives of soldiers. He himself did gymnastics regularly and made recordings of typical sporting activities such as boxing, swimming, fencing and especially gymnastics. He also captured art, trade and scientific motifs in the picture. From 1907 to 1910 he traveled to Bavaria and Saxony. Here, on behalf of several companies, he created recordings of halls that were used for production and storage. During stays in Hamburg in 1908 he created a photo series showing the Gängeviertel and comparable streets and squares.

Father and son Hamann used glass negatives in the formats 13 x 18 centimeters and 18 x 24 centimeters in their joint studio. Johann Hamann specialized in stereo recordings and the autochrome process , invented only three years earlier , which enabled color recordings. The photographer was able to implement it successfully and took color photos of animals and folk shows in Hagenbeck's zoo . After Johann Hamann was able to win the HAPAG shipping company as a major customer, numerous cartes-de-visites for the seafarers employed there were created in her studio from 1899 to 1906 . 135 of these pictures have been preserved in an elaborately designed slip-in album with leather cover. These “captains of the Hamburg-America Line” are now kept in the Museum of Art and Industry .

In 1906 Heinrich Hamann traveled to sea for the first time for a longer period on behalf of HAPAG. He took pictures of the country and people in Scotland, islands in the Atlantic, the coast of Norway and Svalbard, which the shipping company used to illustrate travel brochures. Since he was able to take pictures using the autochrome process, he received a follow-up order from Hapag, which wanted to illustrate elaborate advertising brochures. The photographer first traveled through the Mediterranean in 1908, and a year later through the Norwegian fjords on the twin-screw steamer Meteor . Together with his father, he photographed the emigration halls on the Veddel in 1909 . This extensive series of pictures is of great importance for the documentation of the social history of Hamburg.

In 1911 the construction of the steamer Imperator began in the Vulkanwerft . HAPAG commissioned Hamann to document the construction progress graphically. Hamann, who made a handwritten note of his résumé, wrote that he should photograph the ship "from the keel to the flag button". In the time up to the launch, he took pictures of all the details of the world's largest ship at the time. For the photos he used glass negatives measuring 18 x 24 centimeters. The creation of the pictures was also a great physical effort.

In 1912 Hamann drove to the Levant and the Middle East with the converted Germany . During this "Great Orient Tour" he traveled to Algiers, Genoa, Villafrance near Nice, Naples, Palermo, Messina, Malta, Port Said, Haifa, Beirut, Athens, Smyrna and Constantinople.

Hamann was injured in his right arm during the First World War . Because of this, he could no longer use the arm fully. The photographer therefore learned to write with his left hand. He continued to work as a photographer and during this time mostly took pictures of the Gängeviertel and its residents.

After the end of World War II , Hamann offered the British military government to document the war-related damage in the port of Hamburg . As commissioned work, pictures of numerous wrecks and complex rescue operations were created. In the 1950s he photographed the newly built Springer high-rise, among other things . For this, too, he used glass negatives measuring 18 x 24 centimeters.

On the occasion of his 90th birthday, the Central Association of German Professional Photographers awarded him a golden badge of honor. The city of Hamburg awarded him the state prize.

estate

Heinrich Hamann's curriculum vitae can be found in the Fritz Kempe archive of the Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe. The photos after the end of the war of the destruction in the Port of Hamburg caused by the Second World War are kept in the archive of the International Maritime Museum (taken from the Hamburg Archive Fuchs).

Exhibitions

• December 6, 2017 – mid-March 2018: Art in Chaos, The Port of Hamburg in photos by Heinrich Hamann 1945–1947. International Maritime Museum , deck 1.

literature

• Gabriele Betancourt Nuñez: Hamann, Heinrich . In: Franklin Kopitzsch, Dirk Brietzke (Hrsg.): Hamburgische Biographie . tape 5 . Wallstein, Göttingen 2010, ISBN 978-3-8353-0640-0 , p. 164-165 .
• Landesbildstelle Hamburg (ed.): Johann and Heinrich Hamann - The life's work of a photographer family. With a foreword by Helmut Schmidt. Verlag Christians, Hamburg 1993, ISBN 3-7672-1170-X
• Walter Uka (Ed.): Around the Gängeviertel / Hamburg 1889 - 1930. Photos by Johann and Heinrich Hamann . Nishen-Verlag, Berlin 1986, ISBN 3-88940-214-3
• Fritz Kempe (edit.): Inventory catalog photography between daguerreotype and art photography , p. 136, Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe, Hamburg 1977