Conceptual Portrait and Commercial Photographer

Alumni Thought Leader: Hanna Agar

For the past five years I have been living and working as a photographer and editor in New York City. While earning my BFA in Photography at UW-Eau Claire I quickly realized that I didn’t see myself as a wedding or family photographer. I loved doing theater and art, sewing costumes, and creating characters. I loved traveling and exploring, meeting new people, and absorbing different cultures.

One of the great things about going to UW-Eau Claire was that it is small enough that I was able to pursue all these different interests through being in plays, studying abroad, doing a national exchange, taking dance classes, playing club hockey, and studying art.

I wanted to be able to incorporate all these passions that had been fostered into my photography work. I realized what I really wanted was to explore the world of high end fashion and celebrity portrait photography.

With the wonderful optimism and friendliness of my good Midwestern self, I struck off for NYC after graduating and was rudely smacked in the face by cold hard reality, or at least the egotistical fashion/celebrity world reality. My first internship was straight out of the film The Devil Wears Prada, and I am not exaggerating.

1. I have been yelled at for not getting chocolate chip cookies fast enough.
2. I have been tasked to find a massaging arm chair to rent for a celebrity with a bad back.
3. I have been ordered to do a school project for the producer’s niece.
4. I have been told, no, you can’t take a taxi, when I was asked to pick up an orchid for the photographer’s mother and it was blizzarding outside.
5. I have had to get up at 4AM to pick up a 15 passenger van that I had to drive around Manhattan all day until finally getting to return it at 2AM the next morning and make my way home to Brooklyn.

In between all the stress and anxiety, there were some awesome moments of being on huge photo sets, meeting celebrities and musicians that I love, working with talented production teams to create amazing imagery, and one band even asked if I wanted to get high with them (an offer in which I declined). After some slightly traumatizing experiences, I decided to intern and assist smaller photographers. These turned out to be much friendlier experiences and through them I began to really get into editing photos. With my background in painting and drawing, I realized that retouching came very naturally to me. All it is is painting on top of a photo to enhance it in different ways.

I spent three solid years assisting a few different fashion and portrait photographers and working at a high end retouching studio. Soon though, I began to feel bored and uninspired. I was spending so much energy helping other people create beautiful imagery that I had little motivation left to do my own work.

Two years ago I decided to accept less assisting work and started working more steadily as a photographer. At this point I had been quite disillusioned by the fashion world. Cool clothing is great but I couldn’t care less about if it is from the current season. My few times of traveling for work were more tiring than exciting and there was rarely any time to actually explore a location. What I came to realize was that I really wasn’t that into fashion but I was really into meeting and photographing interesting people who might be creatively costumed.

Over the past few years now I have been creating conceptual portraits for a wide range of interesting people. For musicians and artists, for health/life coaches and yogis. For magicians, comedians, and jugglers. For a skipping club and an adult preschool. For a poet and a drag queen.

“All of these individuals amaze and inspire me. I love celebrating the unique talents and passions of the amazing array of characters that populate our lovely planet. I want to help make everyone feel special and beautiful and interesting. I want to know more about YOU so I can build a fantastical, magical, whimsical, silly, photographic world in which you are the star.”

While things were looking up in NYC with my name being passed around and more and more people interested in working with me, I decided to move back to Wisconsin. Wisconsin is a rather underrated state and many on the East Coast don’t really even know where it is.

But Wisconsin has a remarkably rich artistic and entrepreneurial spirit that I have seen living in Eau Claire and in Viroqua (where I now live).

I am so inspired by the people who pursue their artistic passions and don’t think they need to move to NYC. Those are the people I want to work with. Don’t get me wrong, I loved living in Brooklyn, but there is this feeling that can take hold of even the strongest of us that somehow because of where we live our art is “better than…” or “cooler than…”. The condescension I have felt from some people when I mention not living in NYC forever is quite honestly just ridiculous. NYC is like an artistic black hole that is sucking in all the creative people and creating art deserts around the world. You know who doesn’t need another creative photographer? NYC. So now I am back because I think Wisconsin and the Midwest are awesome places to live, and I want to encourage, foster, and photograph all the interesting people and businesses who call this area home.

Check out Hanna’s website, facebook page, instagram, and blog to learn more about Hanna and see more examples of her creative photography!