The Photography of Harry Benson
When photographer Harry Benson landed on the tarmac of New York’s John F. Kennedy Airport on Feb. 7, 1964, it was his first trip to America. The fateful Pan Am flight 101 also carried a not-so-little-known band called The Beatles. They too were freshmen to the U.S., as the band’s hit song, “I Want to Hold Your Hand” had reached the No. 1 spot in America and was gearing up for what would be the band’s historic performance on The Ed Sullivan Show. This was a pivotal moment in their careers, as Beatlemania was sweeping the nation.
As the door swung open to the metal gangway, George, John, Paul, Ringo — and then Harry — popped out eagerly, all five men dressed in black. Now, you wonder how, with a giant aircraft full of managers, reporters, friends and handlers, Benson was the fifth man off the plane. It was this inherent cunning ability that the then 34-year-old photojournalist from Glasgow, Scotland, possessed to get himself right in the center of where the action was. Benson paused, taking a beat to process the hundreds of fans (being held back by police) that greeted them with shrieks and screams making the Twilight and Justin Bieber tweens seem like fans at a Yanni concert. And then he lifted his Rollei camera and started shooting. Benson knew right then that everything in his life was about to change. “It was hysteria — like nothing I had seen before. The reaction from the fans, the effect they had on people by just being in their presence was both chaotic and amazing,” Benson, with his full head of white hair and his signature black eyebrows, recalls from his New York apartment.
Benson had been with the band, while they were smoking cigarettes and composing songs in their Paris hotel room at the George V, when they received word that they were coming to America. “How about a pillow fight to celebrate,” Benson suggested, as he had seen the boys do this before when they were stir crazy from being cooped up in their hotel rooms trying to escape the screaming masses. “No, that’ll make us look silly,” Lennon replied. A few minutes later, Lennon sneaked up behind McCartney and wacked him in the head with a pillow. And so it began. Benson clicked away at them jumping on the bed in their pajamas full of raw and innocent happiness.
“As soon as I got to America, I knew I had to live here. It was where my career would be. My opportunity was here, and I couldn’t wait to get out of London.” Benson had been shooting regularly for The London Daily Express then under the ownership of Lord Beaverbrook. The pillow fight image had been developed in the George V bathroom and wired over to London that night to meet the deadline. “When I first began, it was very different and gritty back then. No digital cameras, no fancy trick photography. I was using glass plates instead of negative film. You had to guess the distance. The pillow fight was taken with a wide-angle Rollei. But today I shoot only digital with the Canon Mark III. Digital is magic!” says Benson, still with a thick Scottish brogue.
Benson’s most famous works — and those he’s proudest of — are the ones full of movement. “Spontaneity is the life of a picture. Spending too much time in the studio with lighting takes the soul out of it.” Shooting on foot alone or with only one assistant worked in his favor. “I could get in and out quickly. There were no other people swarming around making the subject nervous. That’s how I could always get close to [the people] I was shooting and have them let down their guard.”
Benson would move directly into the action, knowing exactly the right moment that something was going to happen — from Muhammad Ali (then Cassius Clay) knocking out Sunny Liston to the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy to 9/11. “I never wanted to do fashion. As a photojournalist, I have lasting, historic images, and I got to travel to places where things were happening. My wife, Gigi, let me go without holding me back. I can’t stress enough how important that is because a lot of photographers would call in and say they couldn’t go on such-and-such an assignment because their wives wanted them to stay out of harm’s way. The best stories happen on a moment’s notice. They’re spontaneous, as opposed to the work being set up in a studio. Then the photographs can become stagnant.”
Having snapped 11 presidents and everyone from Winston Churchill to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (and even King’s family at his funeral), Benson has always been allotted special access. Whether it’s the confidant air about him that people don’t question (a trick he picked up working close to famous subjects) or his drive to get the most interesting picture he can, Benson also credits luck for being in the right place at the right time.
He was allowed into Michael Jackson’s Neverland Ranch bedroom, the private quarters of the White House and Elizabeth Taylor’s hospital room (appointed with Pratesi sheets and accompanied by her Maltese dog). “They said Elizabeth Taylor was the most beautiful woman in the world. She let me photograph her after her brain surgery, bald with a scar across the top of her head. It shows Liz Taylor doesn’t give a shit how she was photographed. That is the opposite of Hollywood glamour today. This was probably the most unbeautiful time in her life. Actors never get photographed without perfect makeup and hair — it’s a woman’s crowning glory. And yet, there was Elizabeth. She marches to her own drummer.”
Coming from a modest upbringing in Glasgow at the end of WWII, Benson left school at the age of 13. He did odd jobs from working at his father’s zoo to newspaper boy before attending The Glasgow School of Art, where his interest in photography was born. “My life has been a lot of fun. I have a lot of pictures to look back on. I was there when the Berlin Wall went up and for the fall of it. And I am still working. Most people retire to take photographs. I’ve always said, ‘Do what makes you happy in life,’ and for me, it’s been to document history.”
In 2009, Queen Elizabeth II honored Benson at Buckingham Palace, bestowing him with the title of Commander of The British Empire. He’s published 14 books of his works and has two more slated for release in 2011 — one on New Yorkers and the other on world chess champion Bobby Fischer, who famously took the title from Russia’s Boris Spassky in Iceland in 1972. Benson was Fischer’s only confident during that time. Like many of his subjects, Benson got close to who they really were, and his body of work not only illustrates this, but tells the viewer a story of history.
– Tessa Benson
Say Something!
Remember my personal information
Advertisment
Comments