The genius of Harry Benson

Sometimes you have to go away to discover what you should have found at home. That is the case for me with the photographer Harry Benson, originally from Glasgow, now well into his nineties, and the recorder of many of the key moments and personalities of the last several decades.

Harry Benson photographed by Christopher Michel | © Cmichel67, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

I had known the name of Benson before, and I had an idea of a few of his photographs. But it wasn’t until I went to an opening of a show of more than a hundred of them that I saw exactly how important – and moving – a photographer he was. A new gallery in Washington DC is featuring his work, which you can see by clicking the links.

In the UK, I guess, he is best known for his photos of the Beatles, and the clever portrait of Queen Elizabeth II opening her red box (you’ll probably recognize it, even if you don’t know it’s by him). The focus of the show in Washington DC was more American and more heart-wrenching. There was an unforgettable portrait of Martin Luther King’s family after his assassination. But I was also struck by the whole series of photographs of presidents, on and off duty. I had never seen before the picture of the Clintons (nearly) kissing in a hammock, nor of George W. Bush, giving us a punch from the comfort of his sofa.

The most memorable were of Nixon, to whom Benson had access right up to the very end of his presidency. The resignation moment is a brilliant image (just look at Pat Nixon’s face). But for me the stand-out picture in the whole show was the photograph of Nixon speaking to the Knesset in front of Chagall’s tapestry of the history of the people of Israel – where the President’s hands exactly mirror those in the tapestry (an extraordinary and apparently unplanned doublet).

Photography at its absolute best.

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