harry benson recap

i thought i would provide a quick recap from my evening with harry benson and a quick photo of the night. harry benson was very charming and such a pleasure to listen to. he's seen some really amazing things in his lifetime. he took us through a selection of his photographs and told the stories behind them. all, in all, it was a really fun evening.


(isn't my new iphone app cool... it makes pictures into polaroids... i love it!)

a few highlights:

** harry arrived in the US with the beatles and never left. his photographs capture so many moments of beatles history... when lennon said they were more powerful than god, when they met mohammed ali, paul composing at the piano with stella, their arrival in the US.

** i asked him if there was anyone left that he was interested in photographing... he said putin. and maybe the pope... reading the sports page in bed... to humanize him a bit. :)

** he has a great picture of greta garbo, swimming along in antigua when she just happened to float by the boat that he was on with friends.

** elizabeth taylor allowed harry to take photographs of her both pre and post her brain surgery. she really marches to her own drummer doesn't she?

** harry believes that in the world of photographers versus reporters, photographers are able to understand subtle nuances of things that are happening. photographers are also able to get much closer to subjects through their art. reporters are simply 'too busy taking notes to see what's really happening'. he said that while working at the nixon white house, the photographers could see that something was happening within the staff... but the reporters were missing it for the most part.

** he was there when bobby kennedy was shot, at martin luther king's funeral, in somalia at the refugee camps, at the watts riots, in afghanistan with the army, with the ira in ireland, when the berlin wall went up and when it went down, when nixon resigned, with michael jackson on neverland ranch...

what an amazing life.