Marc Hauser

“Who made Marc Hauser a household name? Me.” 

At age 13, Chicago native Marc Hauser (1952–2018) received his first Brownie camera. By 21, he had worked as an assistant to fashion photographer Stan Malinowski and photographed covers for LIFE and Rolling Stone. Best known for his black-and-white portraits of celebrities characterized by simple backdrops and single-source lighting, it was the expressions he managed to wrangle from his subjects (who included Bulls-era Michael Jordan, Dolly Parton, Aaron Copland, and Oprah Winfrey)—as well as his outlandish stories and the perpetual smoke drifting out from his Cuban cigars—that made him the singular photographer and personality that he was. Outside the realm of magazines and advertisements, Hauser also cultivated a practice photographing the unfamous, from the kids in Halloween costumes near his Bucktown studio to the streets and cigar factories of Cuba in the early 80s.

As for why he maintained a two-tone practice for his entire career? “I think there’s more color in black and white. You’re more likely to be looking at the person rather than the color.”