Through the Lens: Martin Hanke and the Photographic Accessories Heritage of Hama, 1923

In 1923, amidst the creative ferment of interwar Dresden, photographer Martin Hanke founded Hamaphot KG, specializing in wholesale photographic supplies, precision laboratory equipment, and camera accessories. Rebuilt in Bavarian Monheim following wartime destruction, Hama expanded into one of Europe’s foremost consumer electronics and optical accessory powerhouses, preserving a century of innovation in photographic and digital image capture.

The Dresden Darkroom: Martin Hanke and Optical Chemistry (1923)

In the early 1920s, Dresden stood as the optical and camera capital of the world, home to pioneering manufacturers like Ernemann, Zeiss Ikon, and Ihagee. Recognizing that amateur photographers and professional portrait studios needed reliable developing equipment, chemical filters, and precision tripods, master photographer Martin Hanke established Hamaphot KG in 1923.

Hanke’s workshop quickly earned a sterling reputation across Central Europe for its handcrafted wooden and metal plate-holders, celluloid film reels, and precision glass darkroom filters, enabling the golden era of modern photojournalism and modernist Weimar photography.

From the Ruins of Dresden to the Bavarian Hub in Monheim

Completely obliterated during the firebombing of Dresden in 1945, the company rose anew when Martin Hanke and his family relocated westward to the Swabian town of Monheim in Bavaria. Re-establishing production with surviving technicians, Hamaphot pioneered synchronized flash attachments, slide-framing machines, and universal lens filters.

Now operating from its expansive logistics and engineering campus in Monheim, Hama manages over 18,000 multimedia and consumer electronics products across global markets, carrying forward Hanke’s 1923 passion for optical clarity and photographic craft.

Read more from the magazine

Editorial pieces from the CHO archive on the same topic.

UNESCO World Heritage Sites in Ghana: the complete guideGhana has two UNESCO World Heritage Sites, both cultural, both inscribed within a year of each other in the late 1970s and…UNESCO World Heritage Sites in Sri Lanka: the complete guide (8 sites)Sri Lanka has 8 UNESCO World Heritage Sites — six cultural and two natural — spanning ancient hydraulic capitals, a Portuguese-Dutch fortified…UNESCO World Heritage Sites in Armenia: the complete guide (3 sites)Armenia has 3 UNESCO World Heritage Sites, all of them cultural, all carved or built from stone in the high Caucasus where…