Hannah Kozak
Los Angeles, CA, United States
Hannah was born to a Polish father and a Guatemalan mother in Los Angeles, California. At the age of 10, she was given a Kodak Brownie camera by her father, Sol, a survivor of 8 Nazi concentration camps and began instinctively capturing images of dogs, family and friends that felt honest and real. As a teenager growing up in Los Angeles, Hannah would sneak onto movie lots and snap photos on the sets of Charlie’s Angels, Starsky and Hutch and Family, selling star images to movie magazines and discovering a world that was far from reality.
While working in a camera store at the age of twenty, Hannah’s life changed when she met a successful stuntwoman named Victoria Vanderkloot who became her mentor and helped her start a career in stunts. For nearly twenty-five years, Hannah’s work provided the opportunity to work with notable directors such as Michael Cimino, David Lynch, Mike Nichols, Tim Burton and Michael Bay. She worked as a stunt double for celebrated stars like Cher, Angelina Jolie, Lara Flynn Boyle and Isabella Rossellini. On every set, Hannah took her camera to work, capturing candid, behind-the-scene pictures that penetrated the illusion of Hollywood magic.
Her wanderlust and career in the film business afforded Hannah the opportunity to travel from Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Mexico, Guatemala,Egypt, Italy, Israel and India, capturing images of far away lands and exploring the innocence and truth found in the faces of children from around the world.
Hannah creates psychological and autobiographical photographs. Her subjects are the people and places that touch her emotionally as she has been photographing people and places for four decades.
2019 - FotoEvidence Inaugural W Award book finalist, 2014 - CDS/Honickman Duke Univ 1st Book Prize Photography, 2014 - Julia Margaret Cameron Award, 6th Edition, 2014 - Julia Margaret Cameron Award, 6th Edition, 2013 - Julia Margaret Cameron Award, 5th Edition
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Bolivia children at play in Prison
Hannah Kozak
As a child, I witnessed my mother’s abuse at the hands of an alcoholic husband. Watching this at a young age has made me an advocate of empowering women as an adult. I have become ever more aware of the pain of other people’s lives and allow it to be part of me. Creating the photos of these women of the Centro de Orientación Femenino de Obrajes jail has given me a gift- the gift of helping others, without fear, which is true liberation and is essential to my own spiritual health and stamina.