Betty Hahn: Photography or Maybe Not

Afterimage, Jan-Feb, 1996 by K. Johnson Bowles

The catalog of Hahn's retrospective at the Museum of Fine Arts, Museum of New Mexico, Santa Fe, Betty Hahn: Photography or Maybe Not by Steve Yates is a comprehensive chronicle of Hahn's quest and provides a thought-provoking dialogue on the implications of her work. It is a pivotal and long awaited discourse. Hahn's name has been noted often in major publications on the history of photography, but her importance and the breadth of her work is usually only mentioned in passing. Typically the same image - Ultra Red and Infra Violet (1967) - appears again and again. Betty Hahn: Photography or Maybe Not illustrates that the real power and importance of Hahn's work is not necessarily limited to a single engaging image, but is to be located in the interrelationship between bodies of work and their common denominator - everyday photography. Perhaps this is one reason it has taken so long for a major publication to be produced about Hahn's work. According to traditional approaches to categorization in art, Hahn's work doesn't fit neatly, in part because of the artist's diverse use of materials and processes, as well as 24 distinct bodies of work.

The title chosen for the catalog cleverly toys with the difficulties in codifying and assessing Hahn's work. Photography or Maybe Not is an uncomfortable title with many layers of possible meaning. Is Yates unsure that Hahn's work is photography? Is the author afraid of challenging the status quo? Is he poking fun at the nature of categorization? Because Yates is a curator of photography, one can assume he considers her work "photography," but what is exceptional is his enthusiasm for and ability to embrace the notion of her work fitting many media categories. Though the essays included by David Haberstich and Dana Asbury are interesting and essential to understanding Hahn's work, essays by scholars in other relevant disciplines such as decorative arts, printmaking or material culture would have been truly ground-breaking. In this sense it is confusing and problematic for Yates to define Hahn's style as "pluralistic" and to state that we are in an "era of contemporary art without category." The traditional process of historical and artistic assessment by experts in a given discipline has been challenged by an insider willing to ask more questions, but Yates is still a curator of "photography."

The title's questioning tone is engaging conceptually by suggesting a response given by someone who either doesn't know the answer, or knows but is too timid or self-conscious in the presence of those deemed more powerful. Yates seems to suggest that the high/low art hierarchy is about power and paranoia. The work also pokes fun by boldly questioning those who define photography solely by its difference to and exclusion of other media. The title, Photography or Maybe Not, predicts the book's challenging and feisty character.

Yates does an excellent job of confronting an exclusionary art and photography history, which has its origins in modernist theory. The gist of his argument is exemplified by his statement: "The autonomy of individual art forms, as defined by Clement Greenberg in his treatise 'Modern Painting' has become less important to artistic discourse." Not surprisingly, he cites passages by well-known modernists as irrelevant to contemporary image-making. He quotes Strand: "Photography . . . finds its raison d'etre, like all media, in a complete uniqueness of means . . . . The full potential power of every medium is dependent on the purity of it's use." Having thus prepared the field, Yates connects the importance and relevance of Hahn's work to her ability to transcend "traditional materials," saying that she "expands the possibilities of photographic expression." In this sense Yates illustrates Hahn's ability to make photography a part of art rather than apart from it, again referencing the title and pointing to the long standing tensions between "art" and "art photography." For Yates, "the medium is not the message but a springboard to epiphanies on the nature of reality."

Haberstich discusses Hahn's life and influences in his thorough and thoughtful, though at times paternalistic, essay. The essay is tainted with old-guard phrases like "I knew she was up to something" and "gentle mischief" that often sound like proverbial pats on the head rather than serious discourse. There are other references that elicit a similar bristle. At one point he equates and at once seems to dismiss Hahn's use of traditional American craft traditions, such as quilt-making or embroidery, to a search for more "female" role models. It seems more probable that her use of such materials implies that "craft" materials can be viable within the realm of fine art. Haberstich also goes too far when discussing Hahn's relationship with photographer Henry Holmes Smith. His tone is particularly condescending when he says "She resolved to be a helper and facilitator, straightened his office and cleaned his darkroom." When Hahn relates her experience with sexism when she applied for a teaching position at the Rochester Institute of Technology in the 1960's, Haberstich seems to question it. He veils his mistrust by reinterpreting the meaning of the statement: "How would it look to have a woman in the darkroom with all those boys?" made by William Shoemaker, RIT chair at that time, and suggesting that he meant "How would you feel as the only woman in a group of good old boys - or crotchety old men?"