Background
James H. Hare was born on October 3, 1856 in London, United Kingdom. He was the son of a camera maker, he was self-taught in the photographic arts.
James H. Hare was born on October 3, 1856 in London, United Kingdom. He was the son of a camera maker, he was self-taught in the photographic arts.
James Hare attended St. John's College in London. He voluntarily left after one year and became an apprentice in his fathers camera shop.
During the early 1880s James Hare began to lose interest in camera manufacturing. He took up free-lance photography as a hobby and sold his work to various London journals.
In 1889, James Hare became a technical adviser for E.& H.T. Anthony & Co., moving from London to Brooklyn, New York, where he lived for the rest of his life. He worked for a while as a freelance photographer and in 1895, he became a full-time photographer for Illustrated American magazine.
On 15 February 1898, one month after a fire destroyed the Illustrated American headquarters, James Hare presented himself at the office of Collier's Weekly proposing to photograph the wreckage of the battleship Maine, and life in Spanish Cuba. This was his first major job. He then captured images of the Spanish-American War (1898), which Collier's used to build support up for the controversial conflict.
After the Spanish-American War, James Hare photographed four more wars: the Russo-Japanese War in 1904 and 1905, the Mexican Revolution in 1911 and 1914, the First Balkan War in 1912 and 1913, and World War I. He became known as the man who made the Russo-Japanese conflict famous, and was adored by his peers and contemporaries. In 1914, James Hare learned that Collier's, his longtime employer, would not be sending him to Europe to cover World War I, so he contacted Leslie's Weekly to offer his services. He was hired by them and sent to England. During World War I he documented American, British, Canadian, and Italian soldiers, St Dunstan's home for blind soldiers, the Greek harbour town of Thessaloniki, the military hospital at the Hall of Mechanics at the Grand Palais in Paris, people fleeing Antwerp, funerals of the dead from the RMS Lusitania, and the American Ambulance Hospital at Neuilly-sur-Seine, among other subjects.
Other than photographing war, James Hare took many notable photographs of aircraft evolution and early aviators, including the first photo by a journalist of an aircraft in flight in the US—the Wright Flyer III at the Kill Devil Hills in North Carolina in May 1908. He also documented American presidents, Boy Scouts, Haiti and other Latin American locations, and religious and archaeological sites in the Middle East.
After 1922 James Hare did little photography but lectured regularly. In 1929, he retired. In 1939, he was made the honorary president of the Overseas Press Club. On 24 June 1946, he died while staying with one of his daughters in Teaneck, New Jersey.
On 2 August 1879 James Hare married Ellen Crapper with whom he had five children.