Birdman
Maker
Hauser, Marc
American, 1953-2018
Date1991
MediumGelatin silver print
Dimensionspaper: 14 in x 11 in
Credit LineGift of John and Mary Mulvany
Object number1991:40
About the ArtistA professional photographer for more than forty years, Marc Hauser specialized in dramatic portraits and won numerous awards for his commercial work. At age 14, he worked as an apprentice to renowned fashion photographer Stan Malinowski, and three years later, he completed his first commercial job, for Playboy magazine. As a teenager, Hauser produced hundreds of album covers for bands such as The Rolling Stones, The Eagles, Rod Stewart, and Joe Cocker. He later contributed to numerous major advertising campaigns and earned recognition for his portraits of celebrities like Michael Jordan and John Waters. Throughout his career, Hauser also undertook a number of more personal projects, such as an extended series of portraits of male and female bikers, published as the book Road Pirates in 1991. These portraits record the common appearance and attire of the bikers—leather jackets, tattoos, often beards for the men—but also the marks of their individuality. Most of the images in the book are accompanied by quotations or descriptive texts that outline the subject's personal history or philosophy, and provide a sense of the biker's lifestyle. The photograph Birdman (1991), represented in the Museum of Contemporary Photography’s collection, is drawn from this project. The text accompanying this image tells us that Birdman is a tattoo artist and a pastry chef, born in Arkansas to parents who were moonshiners. Like many of the bikers, he has a nickname, in this case drawn from his attachment to the symbol of the American bald eagle.
