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Hans Proppe
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Although originally trained as an architect and a professor of Design at California Institute of the Arts for five years, I have produced over seventy hours of movies and mini-series for television. My great avocation has always been an abiding interest and passion for photography. I am totally untrained (and perhaps undisciplined) but I am very happy with my eclectic interest and approach to the potential of images: Street photography. Figurative. Abstract. Travel. Studio. Photoshopped images. I am not particularly interested in the mechanics and high end religious mandates of 'serious' photography. I am drawn to the content of a frame whether it is the literal content or the compositional content. I like for images to be evocative, challenging, absurd, paradoxical. And while I have had shows in galleries and published images, my true home and fit is on Flickr where since 2004 I have posted images pretty much every day. It keeps me challenged and working to come up with something worthwhile to post. Some of the time I hope I succeed.

Find me on Flickr here
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Blog Entries by Hans Proppe

Street Portraiture

(6) Comments | Posted November 30, 2012 | 2:13 PM

Street portraiture is hard for me, but has become easier over time. I am not a big fan of long lens or surreptitious shots of people you see in the crowd; you are in some way "taking" their image without establishing any kind of relationship between photographer and subject much...

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Panoramic Photography Without Panoramas (PHOTOS)

(1) Comments | Posted October 23, 2012 | 3:31 PM

Back in the analog days I enjoyed shooting with 35mm Wide-Lux and Noblex cameras. I was not so much interested in shooting the traditional nature or cityscape panoramas for which the cameras are ideal but to photograph people in their settings whether in the street or in the studio. Both...

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Neon Ghosts (PHOTOS)

(0) Comments | Posted August 16, 2012 | 12:00 PM

Sadly, neon signs seem to be on their way out. You still see some unambitious ones here and there that are more decorative than exclamatory. More factual than lyrical. For the most part they are slowly giving way to the simpler, less expensive plastic signs or the larger displays of...

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The Museum of Unnatural History in Strangetown (PHOTOS)

(1) Comments | Posted July 2, 2012 | 7:03 PM

I had a dream last night, a strange dream, visiting a strange place with a strange museum...

The Museum of Unnatural History in Strangetown is well known in the region for its fascinating dioramas, elaborate exhibits and documentation of little known natural and unnatural events and phenomena, some of them...

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La route 66 nostalgique en images (PHOTOS)

(0) Comments | Posted June 26, 2012 | 12:49 PM

Le photographe et réalisateur de film Hans Proppe le dit: il «aime conduire. Il saute dans sa voiture, met de la musique à fond et garde les yeux ouverts».

Aux États-Unis, il y a beaucoup à voir sur les routes secondaires. Les paysages défilent... On peut traverser de nombreux états...

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Seed Pods in my Hand (PHOTOS)

(1) Comments | Posted May 26, 2012 | 12:45 PM

Perhaps because of my formal training in design and architecture, I am drawn to geometry, tessellation, pattern, structure - things that functionally enclose - particularly in nature. Over the years I have collected various seed pods as I ran across them in various travels and swap meets. Their size alone...

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Bodyscapes (PHOTOS)

(0) Comments | Posted May 10, 2012 | 5:30 PM

I like abstracting the human figure in images. No faces, no hands, no feet that tend to work against the abstraction of curves and lines.

These particular images were part of an experiment to use the figure to break the light from white to black, to create the possibilities...

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Sons With Guns (PHOTOS)

(157) Comments | Posted April 30, 2012 | 12:10 PM

Images from an ongoing project, "Sons With Guns." My original text for accompanying these images was filled with the usual litany of concerns about the gun culture in America; condemnation about the belligerent NRA that continues to mythologize and cloak any attempts at sane gun control as the first measures...

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Rust And Roll On Route 66 (PHOTOS)

(0) Comments | Posted April 16, 2012 | 5:01 PM

I like to drive. Jump in the car, blast some music and keep my eyes open.

If you cruise only the Interstate highways, the fast food joints, gas stations are merely the banal punctuation marks along the way. But if you go off the freeways and find the backroads or...

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La route 66 nostalgique (PHOTOS)

(0) Comments | Posted April 16, 2012 | 12:49 PM

Le photographe et réalisateur de film Hans Proppe le dit: il «aime conduire. Il saute dans sa voiture, met de la musique à fond et garde les yeux ouverts».

Aux États-Unis, il y a beaucoup à voir sur les routes secondaires. Les paysages défilent... On peut traverser de nombreux états...

Read Post

Rust And Roll On Route 66 (PHOTOS)

(251) Comments | Posted April 14, 2012 | 8:00 AM

I like to drive. Jump in the car, blast some music and keep my eyes open.

If you cruise only the Interstate highways, the fast food joints, gas stations are merely the banal punctuation marks along the way. But if you go off the freeways and find the backroads...

Read Post

Semana Santa: Holy Week in Tzintzuntzan, Mexico (PHOTOS)

(3) Comments | Posted April 3, 2012 | 6:19 PM

Semana Santa (Holy Week) started this week once again in its ancient, timeless tradition in a little village called Tzintzuntzan, near Patzcuaro, in the Central Highlands of Michoacan, Mexico. Three times in the last 20 years I have gone to Tzintzuntzan to document their Semana Santa (but also because I...

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Play Dolls, Dolls Play (PHOTOS)

(12) Comments | Posted March 30, 2012 | 11:00 AM

Some years ago I came across a man at a swap meet in Olympia, Wash. who had seven or eight large cardboard boxes of dolls for sale. I say "dolls" but, in fact, mostly the boxes were filled with dismembered dolls and doll parts and pieces -- legs, arms, heads,...

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