HARRY BENSON - PART 1

INTERVIEW BY JESSE PEARSON
PORTRAIT BY ROE ETHRIDGE

Click here for a slide show of some of Benson's best shots. Harry Benson has taken some of the most recognizable and iconic portraits of the 20th century. After getting his start on Fleet Street in London, working in the daily melee known as Britain’s newspaper industry, he photographed everyone from the Beatles to Muhammad Ali to Martin Luther King Jr. to, famously, Robert F. Kennedy moments after being killed. Benson seemed to always be where the shit was going down—mainly due to being on assignment for Life magazine. Benson has also taken photos in some incredibly dangerous situations, such as Bosnia during the conflicts there and Iraq during the first Gulf War. He was embedded with IRA paramilitaries in Belfast long before there was even such a word as “embedded.” But Harry is also a master of the shiny celebrity portrait. Working for People and Vanity Fair, he has produced some of the warmest images ever of famous people who generally look like douches in photos. When it’s Harry Benson taking the picture, there will always be something spontaneous, funny, and off-kilter about it. It’s not an exaggeration to say that he is one of the most important photographers of the last 50 years. We met with Benson recently at his Upper East Side apartment. He talks with a soft Scottish brogue and says, “Do you know what I mean?” in that way Scottish people often do. His wife and best friend, Gigi, kindly brought us tea in Penguin Books mugs while Harry told us stories about his life and career.

Vice: What’s the process like when you’re deciding which assignments to accept and which to reject?

Harry Benson: I’ve always taken any piece of shit that comes up. Unless you go in the door, you don’t know what you’re going to get.

You also don’t seem precious about doing just one sort of photography. Looking back over all of your work, there are glossy celebrity portraits and harsh photojournalism in equal measure.

I never was a specialized photographer. But I mean, I never did advertising.

That’s like the one thing you never did. Why is that?

Just because it bored me. I like the idea of the unexpectedness of going somewhere. Do you know what I mean? Does that make sense?

It definitely makes sense. I’ve also wondered what the ratio would be in your career of things that were assignments versus things that were self-directed.

Well, it’s been very hard for me—and now I’m talking like a politician—but it’s been very hard for me to photograph in fun. It’s got to be in anger, meaning I’ve got to have a specific purpose. I couldn’t walk around the streets of New York just to take photographs. But if I’ve got an assignment, I can zero in and concentrate on the pictures. It’s like, you don’t get in a fight unless you’re looking for it.

You like to have that sense of being on a mission that an assigned shoot has.

Unlike, say, Cartier-Bresson. I can tell his pictures were meant to happen.

Yeah, he’d go out looking for that moment.

That doesn’t happen with me.

But your portraits are very kind toward the subjects, so when you talk about anger it’s kind of surprising.

What I mean by “anger” is concentration. If I was photographing a personality, it would always be better if I felt a bit edgy or ill at ease. I’d be moving as close as I could to them and I couldn’t care less what they thought of me afterward. But, with that said, very few of my pictures have ever been about debunking people. I don’t go out of my way to hurt anyone.


Nancy and Ronald Reagan. The White House, Washington, DC, 1985


Hillary and Bill Clinton. Little Rock, Arkansas, 1992

Oh no, you don’t try to make people look grotesque—you do the opposite, really.

I recently saw a portrait of Condoleezza Rice that was a close-up and you could see all the pockmarks on her face. Cheap shot. That is a real cheap shot.

Agreed.

It’s not fair, that. It’s like photographing President Nixon and behind him there’s a sign that says “The Loser of All Time” but he’s not aware of it.

You’ve photographed politicians from all across the board and treated them all with equal respect aesthetically. Do you have to leave your own political biases at the door to do that?

I’ve photographed every American president since Eisenhower. And I don’t leave my politics at the door. I would say that the Republicans are easier to work with than the Democrats. The Republicans aren’t so tricky. The Democrats are inclined to lie to you. If I’m photographing a Democrat president, they’ll have a White House photographer there as well most of the time—although Clinton never did. He dismissed them when he came into the room. But Reagan and Nixon were much easier to work with.

They were more direct?

They had manners. The people around them had manners. That’s important, you know?

Who was an especially difficult president to photograph?

Jimmy Carter. But there again, he never stopped me from doing what I wanted to do. And also, I say that Republicans were easier although my politics are probably more Democrat.


TO BE CONTINUED
HARRY BENSON | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 |

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