In 2007, an accident while shooting in Seattle severely damaged the Wilmette native’s right leg and eye, and cost him thousands of dollars in hospital bills. He won’t get too specific about the details—there’s a lawsuit pending—but he says it happened when he was up in a crane, photographing on a golf course. The crane shifted and toppled, slamming him onto the ground. His leg was shattered. Doctors managed to save it, but years later an infection forced them to amputate below the knee.
Hauser is trying to move back to the type of work he did before the accident, but it’s all a matter of time, he says. Though he’s now confined to a motorized wheelchair, last year he made a book of environmental portraits of Chicago neighborhoods for @Properties.
And Hauser has been moving past family portraits. This month, he shot portraits of the American Bar Association president and a wrestler, and in October he’s planning a show of his work at Madron Gallery in Lincoln Park. He doesn’t have an overarching vision for where he wants to be in the next few years, but he does know he won’t be giving up anytime soon.
