Richard Benson
Biography
Richard Benson (b. 1943, Newport, RI) received a Masters Degree from Yale University.
In 1966, Benson took a job as a printer, where he discovered that photography lay at the root of all modern printing trades. He has photographed extensively throughout the United States, initially with an 8 x 10 inch view camera and presently with a handheld high-end digital camera.
For Benson, the relationship between a picture's content and the method by which that picture is made is paramount. Acknowledged as one of the world's preeminent printers and a pioneer in printing technology, Benson currently makes color photographs using an inkjet printer configured to print a single image in at least three successive stages. A skeleton of pigment is initially laid on the paper, and color is gradually added each time it subsequently passes through the printer. Benson literally builds his photographs; a print can require the application of up to nine layers of pigment. By understanding the importance of ink on a page, Benson has developed a technique that results in deeply saturated, vivid images that actually look like the world from which they are taken.
Benson has been instrumental in revolutionizing the technologies and standards for photographic reproduction in ink through such noted publications as The Face of Lincoln (1979), The Work of Atget (4 volumes, 1981-85), Photographs from the Collection of the Gilman Paper Company (1985), and over a dozen Lee Friedlander monographs (1970-1991). He is the co-author of Lay This Laurel with Lincoln Kirstein (1973) and A Maritime Album: 100 Photographs and Their Stories with John Szarkowski (1997), and has authored A Yale Album: The Third Century (2000), The Printed Picture (2008), and North South East West: Richard Benson (2011). He has also printed photographically for Walker Evans, Paul Strand, and other leading photographers.
Benson is the recipient of two publication grants from the National Endowment for the Arts (with Eakins Press); two Guggenheim Fellowships; the Rhode Island Governor's Medal for the Arts; and a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship. His work can be found in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO; The Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven; as well as numerous private collections.
Benson became an adjunct professor at Yale University in 1979 and served as dean of the Yale University School of Art from 1996 to 2006. He retired from teaching in 2011 to devote himself to photography.
Benson lives and works in Newport, RI.