This style of working began when I was 14 years old. Even though I was very young, photography quickly became a serious undertaking. I was an odd kid very interested in science and science fiction. Over time these interests evolved into the relationship between our perception of the external world and reality (with a small ‘r’); the relationship between internal and external. Photography naturally became a vehicle for exploring both areas of interest simultaneously. Today I see sophisticated photographs as images that identify a point in space where internal and external intersect. This ongoing series, ‘Resonance’, was the subject of my first museum exhibition at the Centre Georges Pompidou in 1979, curated by Pierre de Fenoyl.

Around this time, I would visit with Andre Kertesz whenever I was in New York City. Andre and Cartier-Bresson were huge influences on how I understood the potential of a photograph. Didn’t used to carry a camera all the time. On my way to visit Andre I saw something that really upset me because I didn’t have a camera – pre-cellphone. When I told him what happened he looked at me and said, “Steven – always remember it is more important to see something than to photograph it." Paradigm changing.

The relationship between commercial assignment work and personal explorations revolves around the ability to use your understanding of visual storytelling to tell someone else’s story. There are other skills beneficial as well, such as production/organizational skills, understanding lighting, good communication abilities, problem solving skills and a good sense of humor. The similarity, for me, is I’m not selling a product or telling someone else’s story, but, in my personal work I’m promoting an idea or concept based on a personal conceptual framework – this is also the difference. One other significant difference is when working on assignment you get paid!

When I engage with a photographer’s work over years or decades and the images continue to amaze me, I have a need to share it. For me, it is also a way to say thank you to an artist who has been inspirational, to honor them for their dedication to the ideas that drive their work. There is certainly an aspect of my own conceptual framework involved in making curatorial decisions. In my case it is an armature of Surrealism shared with photographers like Arno Raphael Minkkinen or Roger Ballen, for example, moved me to want to produce major retrospectives of their photography, books and video at the Southeast Museum of Photography in Daytona Beach, Florida. It is also exciting to bring artists like Arno and Roger to Daytona for public lectures and workshops. (Roger Ballen’s retrospective included a simultaneous exhibit at Snap! Orlando and traveled from the SE Museum of Photography to the Florida Museum of Photographic Arts in Tampa).

I’m interested in ideas, philosophy in all its manifestations, Existential fiction, collecting photography scientific discoveries and my students are at the top of the list. (During a picnic with the philosopher Jean Baudrillard in Arles, he said to me, “A photograph is not a document – it is a fiction.”)

DaVinci (science and art), Frederick Douglass, Margret Burke-White*, Alexander Gardner, Albert Einstein, Jean-Paul Sartre, Diane Arbus, Martin Luther King for starters. (*In my History and Aesthetics of Photography class, I often talked about the strong bond I have with Margret Burke-White’s work. I’d tell the students, “I’m not sure if there is such a thing as reincarnation. But if reincarnation is real there is the possibility I might be her!”)

Honestly, I’m not certain. I’ll continue working on ‘Resonance’ and have a lot of video I want to edit. I’m finishing work on a nine-year photo-essay about the highway construction work associated with I-4 running through Central Florida. I’ve been photographing the construction sites as if they are National Parks! There are a few bodies of work I tend to explore at the same time. Currently, I’m working on three series. If you go to my website you will find many of these explorations. (www.stevenbensonphotographer.com) I’ve had the pleasure of meeting with Jean-Claude Lemagny,.) the former curator at the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris on several occasions during my early years. During one meeting I was showing him my photographs and he said, “Even though your photographs include a variety subjects and styles, the soul of the images are the same.” He sent me to meet the curator at the Pompidou.

This photograph was made in 1999 as part of an extensive photo-essay about nearly 400 miles of the Yangtze River Valley that disappeared in 2003 when the reservoir filled behind the Three Gorges dam in China. I went to photograph a part of the planet before it was gone. My ‘Fixer/Guide/Assistant’ and I noticed a small village in the distance on the other side of the Daning River (a tributary of the Yangtze). We finally found our way to the community of Dragon Gate Village. It was late afternoon when a very angry village elder asked, “Why is a foreigner taking pictures in our village?” I asked my assistant to explain to him that I was making a documentation of ‘his’ beautiful valley before the reservoir fills. You could see the expression on his face change and suddenly, he invited us for dinner at his house later in the day! When we arrived for dinner with two bottles of a rice liquor as a gift, we were welcome with smiles from the people present. All the food was grown by our hosts. A few neighbors were invited to join us. There were heated conversations and pounding on the table! Of course, six months of studying Mandarin was not enough to allow me to follow what was being said but I was keenly aware of the seriousness of the subject. As we were preparing to leave, the village elder (black tank top) asked if I could make a photograph of them. It surprised me because I had no intention of interrupting the mood after things had changed to laughter. This was a very moving request because I understood he wanted to be part of the record of this place. With my camera on a tripod, I made several exposures. Sometimes saying, 1,2,3 in Mandarin and some exposures made without saying anything. What I realized is that some people moved during the two-second exposures while others held still. For me, the blurring functions as symbolic of the idea several of the inhabitants of Dragon Gate Village have already begun to psychologically separate themselves from their homes. Some of the villager’s homes had been occupied by their ancestors for more than five hundred years. As of 2003 Dragon Gate Village was buried under ninety feet of water from the reservoir.