HMVNipper
Nov 01, 2001, 02:39 PM
The article below appeard in today's New York Daily News. It's about Harry Benson, the photographer who photographed the Beatles on their first trip to America. Quite interesting!
****************
Reflections on 50 Years
Of Glamour & Grit
Book and gallery show present
life through Harry Benson's lens
By CELIA McGEE
Daily News Feature Writer
In his 50-year career, Harry Benson has photographed the world's most
powerful and famous people and the events swirling around them. He could
have had box seats for the Yankee game Tuesday night. President Bush would
be there. Seen him, done him.
"I'd rather watch it on TV or go to a bar," he said. His hand tossed back an
imaginary drink.
Benson has covered wars in Vietnam, Somalia, Bosnia, Soviet-occupied
Afghanistan and the Persian Gulf. He was with Robert Kennedy when he was
assassinated, with Martin Luther King Jr. during the civil-rights marches,
and with police and rioters when Watts burned.
The 71-year-old photographer lives on the upper East Side with a
wraparoundterrace view of the neighborhood near many of the subjects he
turns into friends. But he likes to remind people that photojournalism
"isn't a genteel business."
That business fills "Harry Benson: Fifty Years in Pictures," a book just
published by Harry N. Abrams to go with an exhibition opening tonight at the
StaleyWise Gallery.
He has seen death and destruction, and his voice tightens when he turns to
the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11.
Before the devastation, he said, photojournalism cared too much about "silly
things, all the magazines sucking up to celebrities and PR people."
"They let them choose the makeup artists - the photographer even let them
see the photographs beforehand. That's not about photojournalism, it's about
lighting," he said.
Benson won't sign contracts that contain such restrictions.
He also keeps ownership of his pictures, which fill several walls of filing
cabinets in his apartment. He plans to leave them to his daughters, two of
Manhattan's more glamorous young scene-makers, "so they'll feel their old
man wasn't such a loser," he joked.
For the book and the show, he said, "What I didn't want was anything
precious, but something a bit rough. I've always been uncomfortable with
fashion-y, beautiful pictures. I like doing uncomfortable things."
Such an attitude helped him win the confidence of Irish Republican Army
gunmen and M*** D**** C****** (whom he photographed), as well as serial
murderer Peter Manuel, who, in 1958, became the last person hanged in
Scotland.
It didn't hurt that Benson grew up in Glasgow knowing "a lot of criminals -
boxing promoters, boxers, bookies. They got me in with [Manuel]."
"Photographers should be like spies," he said. "I've always worked alone.
You make your decisions alone. The photographers I know who were killed were
in packs, and usually over nothing."
Still, Benson's work is full of the "fashion-y, beautiful pictures."
He was on hand for People's launch of celebrity culture and for Life's
revival. He shot the Vanity Fair cover of Ronald and Nancy Reagan dancing,
which he said "saved the magazine a month before it was going to close
again."
Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis asked him to photograph her daughter's wedding,
and he cajoled an 80-year-old Fred Astaire into pirouetting for the camera.
He quotes poetry - fellow Scot Robert Louis Stevenson's "From a Railway
Carriage," on scenery briefly glimpsed "and gone forever" - to illustrate
how quickly a photographer must make the choices that make a picture.
Like Benson, his toughest assignments seem to hit "a moment when they
suddenly soften." That's when he moves in.
Waiting for that one moment gave him his picture of a desperate Ethel
Kennedy in the kitchen of the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, in glittering
evening gown, screaming for the crowd around her fallen husband to give him
some air.
Waiting for the moment gave him the snapshot-like portrait of Bill and
Hillary Clinton about to kiss. "It was spontaneous, one of those moments
that will never happen again," he remembers.
Spontaneity is his highest compliment.
"Everything about life interests me," he said.
The only Benson photograph blown up and hanging on his sitting room wall is
of the Beatles having a pillow fight in 1964. "It was spontaneous, it was
happy. And it's when I came to America."
Benson's upbringing was proper. His father was the head of the Glasgow zoo.
"He wanted me in a bank," the photographer said. "I couldn't even count. I
left school at 13. I was angry. Photography was my way out."
In Texas, photographing a ball given for Britain's Prince Philip, he met a
pretty blond - his wife, Gigi, who manages his business.
His pickup line? "I'll tell you something," he said, "I've never been able
to pick up a girl while I was working." Or photograph a woman nude.
"Must be because I'm Scottish."
Naked men are another matter.
O.J. Simpson was photographed in the locker room after a football game - a
full-length and full-frontal shot. But that photo was cropped for the book.
"I didn't want it to be about that," he said.
There was a session (with clothes) with an overly finicky David Copperfield.
"I said, 'Tell Mr. Copperfield I can just use the picture I took of him and
Michael Jackson together the other morning at 9 a.m., outside Michael's
house.'"
Then he calls for his tea. "He's like a broken record about his tea," said
Gigi Benson. "And you can quote me on that."
A cup appears, along with a plate of cookies - biscuits, you'd call them in
Scotland.
Harry Benson takes a sip, takes a nibble and leans back. Yankee Stadium can
get by without him. He is the portrait of a happy man.
Original Publication Date: 11/1/01
------------------
Rooftop Sessions - The Finest In Beatles-Related Fiction. November 2001 Issue up now! About.com BEST OF THE NET, April 2001! www.rooftopsessions.com (http://www.rooftopsessions.com)
"O superb! O Manhattan, my own, my peerless! O strongest you in the hour of danger, in crisis! O truer than steel!" -- Walt Whitman
[This Message Has Been Edited By SF4-EVER On November 03, 2001 08:54 PM]
****************
Reflections on 50 Years
Of Glamour & Grit
Book and gallery show present
life through Harry Benson's lens
By CELIA McGEE
Daily News Feature Writer
In his 50-year career, Harry Benson has photographed the world's most
powerful and famous people and the events swirling around them. He could
have had box seats for the Yankee game Tuesday night. President Bush would
be there. Seen him, done him.
"I'd rather watch it on TV or go to a bar," he said. His hand tossed back an
imaginary drink.
Benson has covered wars in Vietnam, Somalia, Bosnia, Soviet-occupied
Afghanistan and the Persian Gulf. He was with Robert Kennedy when he was
assassinated, with Martin Luther King Jr. during the civil-rights marches,
and with police and rioters when Watts burned.
The 71-year-old photographer lives on the upper East Side with a
wraparoundterrace view of the neighborhood near many of the subjects he
turns into friends. But he likes to remind people that photojournalism
"isn't a genteel business."
That business fills "Harry Benson: Fifty Years in Pictures," a book just
published by Harry N. Abrams to go with an exhibition opening tonight at the
StaleyWise Gallery.
He has seen death and destruction, and his voice tightens when he turns to
the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11.
Before the devastation, he said, photojournalism cared too much about "silly
things, all the magazines sucking up to celebrities and PR people."
"They let them choose the makeup artists - the photographer even let them
see the photographs beforehand. That's not about photojournalism, it's about
lighting," he said.
Benson won't sign contracts that contain such restrictions.
He also keeps ownership of his pictures, which fill several walls of filing
cabinets in his apartment. He plans to leave them to his daughters, two of
Manhattan's more glamorous young scene-makers, "so they'll feel their old
man wasn't such a loser," he joked.
For the book and the show, he said, "What I didn't want was anything
precious, but something a bit rough. I've always been uncomfortable with
fashion-y, beautiful pictures. I like doing uncomfortable things."
Such an attitude helped him win the confidence of Irish Republican Army
gunmen and M*** D**** C****** (whom he photographed), as well as serial
murderer Peter Manuel, who, in 1958, became the last person hanged in
Scotland.
It didn't hurt that Benson grew up in Glasgow knowing "a lot of criminals -
boxing promoters, boxers, bookies. They got me in with [Manuel]."
"Photographers should be like spies," he said. "I've always worked alone.
You make your decisions alone. The photographers I know who were killed were
in packs, and usually over nothing."
Still, Benson's work is full of the "fashion-y, beautiful pictures."
He was on hand for People's launch of celebrity culture and for Life's
revival. He shot the Vanity Fair cover of Ronald and Nancy Reagan dancing,
which he said "saved the magazine a month before it was going to close
again."
Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis asked him to photograph her daughter's wedding,
and he cajoled an 80-year-old Fred Astaire into pirouetting for the camera.
He quotes poetry - fellow Scot Robert Louis Stevenson's "From a Railway
Carriage," on scenery briefly glimpsed "and gone forever" - to illustrate
how quickly a photographer must make the choices that make a picture.
Like Benson, his toughest assignments seem to hit "a moment when they
suddenly soften." That's when he moves in.
Waiting for that one moment gave him his picture of a desperate Ethel
Kennedy in the kitchen of the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, in glittering
evening gown, screaming for the crowd around her fallen husband to give him
some air.
Waiting for the moment gave him the snapshot-like portrait of Bill and
Hillary Clinton about to kiss. "It was spontaneous, one of those moments
that will never happen again," he remembers.
Spontaneity is his highest compliment.
"Everything about life interests me," he said.
The only Benson photograph blown up and hanging on his sitting room wall is
of the Beatles having a pillow fight in 1964. "It was spontaneous, it was
happy. And it's when I came to America."
Benson's upbringing was proper. His father was the head of the Glasgow zoo.
"He wanted me in a bank," the photographer said. "I couldn't even count. I
left school at 13. I was angry. Photography was my way out."
In Texas, photographing a ball given for Britain's Prince Philip, he met a
pretty blond - his wife, Gigi, who manages his business.
His pickup line? "I'll tell you something," he said, "I've never been able
to pick up a girl while I was working." Or photograph a woman nude.
"Must be because I'm Scottish."
Naked men are another matter.
O.J. Simpson was photographed in the locker room after a football game - a
full-length and full-frontal shot. But that photo was cropped for the book.
"I didn't want it to be about that," he said.
There was a session (with clothes) with an overly finicky David Copperfield.
"I said, 'Tell Mr. Copperfield I can just use the picture I took of him and
Michael Jackson together the other morning at 9 a.m., outside Michael's
house.'"
Then he calls for his tea. "He's like a broken record about his tea," said
Gigi Benson. "And you can quote me on that."
A cup appears, along with a plate of cookies - biscuits, you'd call them in
Scotland.
Harry Benson takes a sip, takes a nibble and leans back. Yankee Stadium can
get by without him. He is the portrait of a happy man.
Original Publication Date: 11/1/01
------------------
Rooftop Sessions - The Finest In Beatles-Related Fiction. November 2001 Issue up now! About.com BEST OF THE NET, April 2001! www.rooftopsessions.com (http://www.rooftopsessions.com)
"O superb! O Manhattan, my own, my peerless! O strongest you in the hour of danger, in crisis! O truer than steel!" -- Walt Whitman
[This Message Has Been Edited By SF4-EVER On November 03, 2001 08:54 PM]