Friday, December 04, 2009

60 Years Through His Lens


The Daily Beast focuses on photographer Harry Benson, who has been taking iconic photographs for decades. There is a new monograph of his work.

From the piece...

The book, which spans Benson’s 60-year career, reads like a cultural and political atlas of American history. He has photographed every president since Eisenhower, countless movie stars, singers, soldiers, civil-rights heroes, and athletes. A masked Frank Sinatra walking up the stairs of Truman Capote’s Black and White Ball in 1966; a sanguine mother breastfeeding her baby under the folds of her Ku Klux Klan robe in South Carolina in 1965. Martin Luther King giving a stirring speech after the tear gassings in Canton, Mississippi; Oprah Winfrey stopping for a coffee on the streets of Chicago in 1996. Richard Nixon, flanked by his family, giving an emotional resignation speech in 1974; Hillary Clinton bending over a hammock in Little Rock to give her husband a kiss in 1992. Michael Jackson cavorting with children on the grounds of Neverland; George W. Bush practicing his golf swing in the Texas Governor’s Mansion.

No comments: