Betty Hahn

Once she graduated, Hahn moved to Rochester where she taught at the Rochester Institute of Technology until 1975. Hahn then relocated to Albuquerque where she was professor at University of New Mexico until her retirement in 1997.

Hahn's first solo show exhibiting her work was in 1973 at the Witkin Gallery in New York City. Thereafter, she received several grants from the National Endowment for the Arts in 1974, 1978, and 1983 to continue her work in explorative photography.

Hahn's art has been exhibited throughout the country and worldwide featured in museums highlighting historical processes in Baltimore, Maryland (1972) and nature photography exhibitions in Osaka, Japan (1990). Her work has been displayed at the Albuquerque Museum of Art and Art History (2017), Phoenix Art Museum (2015), and the George Eastman House (2012, 2016). Hahn's work is held in private collectors, galleries, and in permanent museum collections, including the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Center for Creative Photography and the Museum of Modern Art.

The Division of Photographic History at the Smithsonian Institution exhibited Hahn's work in a group exhibit in the 1960s as a part of a developing series of displaying the works of women photographers. Afterwards her work was featured in multiple thematic exhibitions at the Smithsonian.

Betty Hahn (born 1940) is an American photographer known for working in alternative and early photographic processes. She completed both her BFA (1963) and MFA (1966) at Indiana University. Initially, Hahn worked in other two-dimensional art mediums before focusing on photography in graduate school. She is well-recognized due to her experimentation with experimental photographic methods which incorporate different forms of media. By transcending traditional concepts of photography, Hahn challenges the viewer not only to assess the content of the image, but also to contemplate the photographic object itself.

Betty Hahn was born on October 11, 1940 in Chicago, Illinois where she also grew up. At the age of ten, Hahn was given her first camera by an aunt. Hahn later on went to graduate from Scecina Memorial Catholic High School. Soon after, she enrolled at Indiana University with a full scholarship where she furthered her studies in Fine Arts, receiving both her BFA (1963) and her MFA (1966). Throughout her undergraduate years, she concentrated in drawing and painting; however, as she entered graduate study, she worked in photography. During this important developmental period, Hahn studied under one of the most well-known photography teachers of the time, Henry Holmes Smith, who encouraged Hahn's work in alternative processes.