Suzanne Stewart
Staff Writer
There is a collection of photographs at the Pocahontas County Artisan Co-op’s 4th Avenue Gallery that depict life on a horse farm. All seasons are represented, and most of the photos show either horses or a golden retriever enjoying their lives on a Hillsboro farm.
Those photos are the work of Susan Hanley, who has been a photographer for more than seven decades.
While all her work at the gallery is digital, Hanley began her photography career with a Rolleiflex film camera back in 1949.
Hanley went to art school at the Boston Museum School of Fine Arts and took classes in Colorado Springs, never anticipating she would become a photographer.
“At the time [at Boston] I studied in the graphic arts department,” she said. “I did etching and woodcuts, and other forms of printing. I graduated from that. I could draw very well, but I never learned how to paint, so I went to Colorado Springs art school for a year and then I went to Mexico and lived there for almost a year where I did a lot of painting and drawing.”
In 1949, Hanley got a job as the director of art classes for American troops who were deployed to South Korea. It was during this job that she discovered her love and talent for photography.
“When I went there, the first thing I did was buy a Rolleiflex in the PX,” she said. “I was working for the government. I was working as a director of art class for the GIs. There were thousands of GIs there.”
It was impossible to leave the encampment, which was only a few miles from the North Korean border, but Hanley found a way around that. She started giving camera tours to her students and they went out into the villages around the encampment to take photographs.
“That was a big thing,” she said. “Every few weeks, we got whatever vehicle we wanted to have and however many fellows wanted to do it. A lot of them got cameras. For two and a half years, I went to all the surrounding little villages way out in South Korea and during that time, I took many, many photographs of the people who were mostly farmers.”
Hanley set up her own darkroom at the encampment and developed her negatives and photographs while there.
“I had only the Rolleiflex and it was wonderful because I could process them all myself,” she said. “I had a wonderful collection of them, all black and white. They are really good, but a lot of that is the Rolleiflex. They call it the bellybutton camera [because of how you hold it].”
Photos are taken with a Rolleiflex with the camera held at the waist, without obscuring the photographer’s face. Hanley said she believes this is why she was able to get so many photographs of the South Korean families, because she was able to communicate with them.
“I ended up with hordes of children running after me,” she said, laughing.
When Hanley returned to America, she settled in Manhattan where she found an agent and continued her photography, taking photos of the people of the city.
“They sold a lot of my stuff over the years, to Europe and everywhere,” she said.
In 1973, Hanley and her husband, Shannon, made the move to Pocahontas County, and bought a farm in Hillsboro. They began raising cattle and sheep, but soon became very well known for their horses.
“We sold them all over the United States, Canada, Europe, Switzerland, Australia and New Zealand,” she said.
While Hanley became a farmer and the couple made a living from farm life, she continued to carry a camera with her, for those moments that she saw a photograph just waiting to be taken.
“I never go out to take a photograph,” she said. “I have a little camera I carry with me all the time. Then when I see a photograph, that’s what I take. That’s why all my photographs – so many of them have animals in them – because they’re such a part of life as a farmer.
“Our farm, which is extraordinary – every time I go out, I always find something that is telling me, ‘Take a photograph.’”
Recently, Hanley has added poems to her photographs, little verses that coincide with the artwork and elevate it even more.
As for her photos from South Korea, there is a collection of them online and Hanley has been contacted by several documentarians who are working on projects to tell the story of her life and her photography.
She has even sold a couple of the South Korean photographs at the 4th Avenue Gallery.
“I actually had two there and both sold,” she said. “I thought nobody would buy them.”
That is the power of a photograph. The subject matter and the moment in time it captures is what draws the viewer in.
“Things are so spontaneous in photography,” Hanely said. “Thank goodness I always have my camera with me. It’s just a passing moment – whether spring, fall, raining, snow – it’s just there and then it’s gone.
“You can’t get it again.”
