HARRY BENSON
Harry Benson CBE (born 1929, Glasgow, Scotland) is a Scottish photographer whose seven-decade career has produced one of the most comprehensive records of public life in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Born in Glasgow and raised in Troon, Benson began his career at a series of Scottish newspapers before securing an assignment in 1964 that would define his reputation: travelling with the Beatles on their inaugural American tour. His photograph of the four members engaged in a gleeful pillow fight at the Hotel Georges V in Paris, made on the eve of their departure, became one of the most iconic images in the history of rock and roll photography and announced the access and intimacy that would characterize his practice for the decades that followed.
Over more than sixty years Benson has photographed every American president from Dwight D. Eisenhower to the present, covered the civil rights movement, the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy, and conflicts across the globe, while maintaining a parallel career as one of the most sought-after celebrity portraitists of his generation. His pictures have appeared regularly in Life, Vanity Fair, and The New Yorker, and he has shot over one hundred covers for People magazine. He has published numerous monographs and his work has been exhibited internationally.
Benson was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire for his services to photography and has received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Scottish Press Photography Awards.