Alaskan Photographer & Writer
Bill Hanson is an Alaskan photographer and writer based in Juneau who lives, loves, and eats landscapes. He can be found rummaging through rainforests and salty water Archipelagos in search of wild foods, landscapes of beauty, and endless adventure.
Bill’s 45 years of working as a biologist, forester, and commercial seafood processor kindle his desire to share his knowledge and his passion for Alaska’s remarkable landscapes.
His daily explorations begin five minutes from his doorstep, where he can launch his skiff into saltwater or hike the first deer trail without the fetters of “No Trespassing” signs. He loves to supply his family table with local mushrooms, wild plants, seafood, and venison, knowing that these foods re-create the landscape in our minds and muscles.
Website Update (9/12/2022): I’m in the process of adding photography to my website and completing other improvements. Currently, the best comprehensive place to view my photography is my Instagram account: @bhfootloose. See links to my social media in the sidebar. Although I’m no longer posting to the Billy Blog, I’ve left previous posts and photos intact.
Why We Won’t Just Leave Exhibition: What Alaska is Telling the World About Climate Change
I’m honored and excited to have contributed photographs and narrative to this special exhibition in February 2021. Click the image below to view the virtual exhibition.
A Virtual Gallery Exhibition on Community Responses to Climate Change
Alaska is warming twice as fast as the rest of the world, and changes in Alaska’s landscape have a global impact. Why We Won’t Just Leave: What Alaska is Telling the World About Climate Change is a virtual exhibition curated by Lindsay Carron and presented by Social and Public Art Resource Center (SPARC) that highlights the responses of Alaskans to their rapidly changing environment. This exhibition delivers messages that are key for us all if we are to reverse climate catastrophe and cultivate a healthy, vibrant future for generations to come. From activists delivering testimonies in D.C. and artists revealing truth with beauty, to scientists studying methane released from melting permafrost, Alaska has a message for the world.
Why We Won’t Just Leave features portraits, paintings, photography, stories, and video profiles of 20 artists, activists, researchers and community organizers responding to climate change in Alaska.
Artworks (Left to Right above): Keri Oberly, Photograph of Quannah Chasinghorse Potts and Jody Juneby Potts, 2020 (Partial View); Bill Hanson, Broken Blue Ruins at Low Tide, Digital Image from series “Southeast Alaska: Changing Climate, Changing Landscapes, Changing Life” (Partial View) and; Apay’uq Moore, Gram and Girl, Acrylic on Canvas, 2020 (Partial View).
The Social and Public Art Resource Center (SPARC) has provided arts programming in Los Angeles communities since 1976. Our mission is to empower local communities by producing and preserving public artworks that are developed in collaboration with residents; and to facilitate innovative arts programs that encourage audiences to imagine a more just and equitable world.
Alaska Billy Blog: Landscapes Shape Our Lives
Alaska Billy Blog brings together my love of my home landscape and my fascination with landscapes across the world. What new discovery do I find each day in the islands and fjords of Southeast Alaska? How does life in the Markha Valley in Ladakh, India with its 17,000-foot passes shape the people who live there?
But landscape is not just about the people and places of today. How does our landscape connect us to our ancestors and our history? Currently, I’m using the Alaska Billy Blog to explore my family history and write my most recent novel, Spinning Heart.
Alaska Billy Blog: Exploring Life in Alaskan Landscapes
Musings on Alaskan wild landscapes, ecology, and life. Join me as I explore my Southeast Alaska home landscape with occasional forays into the rest of the world. A selection from my daily @bhfootloose Instagram posts. You can also go directly to my most recent Instagram posts by clicking the thumbnails on the sidebar (you don’t need an Instagram account for this). Go to the Alaska Billy Blog…
Alaska Billy Blog: Landscapes of the Past Shape Our Future Lives
Born in 1881, only 5 years after Custer’s Last Stand at the Little Big Horn, my grandfather and namesake, William Otis Hanson (Billy Hanson), grew up in a sod house on the Nebraska prairie. At the age of 15, Billy left home to become a cowboy in Wyoming. The Billy Blog combines relics from Billy’s steamer trunk with the Bill’s memories of his grandfather’s ranch (called “The Billy” by neighbors) to link the society and history of life in the rural West from 1881 to 1964 to life in the present day. Go to the Alaska Billy Blog…
Spinning Heart (novel in development)
Bill’s novel, Spinning Heart, explores love and adventure in the changing world of the early 1900’s, set in the coastal rainforests, islands, and channels of the Pacific Northwest, British Columbia and Alaska. More about fiction by William Arthur Hanson…