Being There: Harry Benson's Fifty Years of Photojournalism

The exhibition 'Being There' examined the shifting agenda for newspaper/magazine photojournalism in Britain and America through the work of a single photographer.

Harry Benson’s newspaper career started in Glasgow in the 1950s. He was soon a principal figure working for the Daily Sketch and Daily Express. He arrived in the United States on the plane that brought the Beatles to America, and used the assignment as an entrance into the feircely competive world of American magazines.

From the early 1960s Benson recorded America’s salient moments; from accompanying Martin Luther King on the Civil Rights marches, standing next to Robert Kennedy when he was gunned down in LA, to meeting with Nixon moments after the President was informed of the break-in at Watergate.

Research was carried out on Benson’s personal archive in New York and at Hulton Getty London holding photographs produced for the Daily Express. Nine hours of interviews with Benson together with interviews with photographers and editors with whom he had worked were analysed.

Organised into six sections including ‘New Certanities’ which examined the coming together of colour printing in journalism and the emergance of Reagan/Thatcher new right politics, the exhibition explored the world of newspaper and magazine photojournalism through the unique career of one photographer and documented the shifting boundaries of celebrity culture against a backdrop of social and political upheaval.

Roger Hargreaves curated the exhibition and authored an essay in the accompanying publication, 'Being There: Harry Benson’s Photojournalism' published by National Galleries of Scotland (15 February, 2007, ISBN-10: 1903278821).

• http://www.nationalgalleries.org/benson
• http://www.lcc.arts.ac.uk/38535.htm