Submitted photo Photographer Richard Hahn is shown with his art poster, “Iconic Youngstown,” which features images of famous local sculptures.

Photography started as part of Richard Hahn’s job. It became his passion.

As founder of the marketing and public relations firm Keynote Media Group, Hahn, 78, regularly needed to take photographs of his clients and their work. In 2018 he downsized the business but continued to use the camera, now primarily to capture whatever images caught his eye.

“I’ve been very fortunate the last couple years,” Hahn said. “I’ve had a lot of one-man shows at galleries across the country, so I’m really pursuing this at a very rapid pace, especially at my age.”

Locally, Hahn’s work has been shown at Butler Institute of American Art, McDonough Museum of Art, Mill Creek Park’s Weller Gallery and Trumbull Art Gallery, and his images also have been displayed in Pennsylvania, Virginia, California, Wyoming, Indiana, Texas, Colorado and Washington, D.C. An exhibition is planned at Miami University in Oxford later this year.

His latest project is “Iconic Youngstown,” an art poster featuring black-and-white images of 16 sculptures found locally.

He had been taking photos of statues for years. Those outside of the Butler were among the first. But it wasn’t done with a project in mind. The same process informed “Facades,” his recent photography exhibition at the Butler focused on local buildings. The theme emerged as he realized how many photos he’d taken of those buildings.

On his website, richardhahnphotography.com, Hahn writes that, “My passion is driven by spontaneous discovery.” However, once he got the idea for “Iconic Youngstown,” it became a mission-driven effort.

“Over the years, I found that I had all these shots that I had taken of statuary in the area, and just decided that I would try to put some together with this one single piece,” he said. “I took all these statue photos and took a couple new ones and decided to make a poster.”

He went in search of statues to complement the images he already had.

“The one that I took recently, which I really, really like is the one at Mount Carmel, the statue kind of overlooking the north side of the city,” he said. “That’s been one of my favorites so far.”

Others he decided to revisit. He had taken photos over the Civil War monument downtown on several occasions, but he went back on a particularly cloudy day in order to get the background that he thought would frame it best.

Taking the photos was the initial step, but it wasn’t the only one. He culled several options as he decided which statues to feature and which images worked best in conjunction with the others.

“The editing process, for me, that’s part of the fun,” Hahn said. “Capturing the image is great. It’s a thrill to be able to find a great image, but then when you take it back to your office and try to make it as clear as possible, or colorize it and do what you can to it, that is the real thrill, and putting this together on the poster was a real fun project.”

“Iconic Youngstown” is available through his website in 18-inch-by-12-inch and 24-inch-by-18-inch prints. There are no plans for gallery exhibition of the 16 images that make up the poster.

“I thought about it,” Hahn said. “I don’t think the Butler would do it at this point, because I just had that show up there sort of recently, but there might be a smaller venue that might take it or there might be a coffee shop locally that could put it in. But I’m just pleased with the way I have it set up right now.”