A MOMENT IN TIME:
ICONIC IMAGES BY HARRY BENSON
MAY 6 - JULY 15, 2023
CURATED BY SALLY MARTIN KATZ
PRESENTING SPONSORS: PETER AND JAMEE GREGORY
PARTICIPATING SPONSOR: DOUGLAS ELLIMAN
MEDIA PARTNER: HAMPTONS MAGAZINE
Curated by Sally Martin Katz, A MOMENT IN TIME: ICONIC IMAGES BY HARRY BENSON is a presentation of the photographer’s impressive collection of images documenting civil rights figures, politicians, musicians, celebrities, and athletes. Benson’s iconic work is an embodiment of some of the most significant moments captured in the 20th and 21st centuries.
HARRY BENSON
Award-winning Scottish photojournalist Harry Benson, CBE began his career at the weekly Hamilton Advertiser newspaper and moved to the Scottish Daily Sketch after his exclusive interviews in prison with Scottish mass murderer Peter Manuel. By 1959 Harry was on London’s Fleet Street working for Lord Beaverbrook’s Daily Express. Harry traveled to America with the Beatles in 1964 and never looked back.
Under contract to LIFE magazine for 30 years, Harry was photographed for other major magazines including TIME, Vanity Fair, Newsweek, French Vogue, Quest, Paris Match, Forbes, Town & Country, Architectural Digest, People, and The London Sunday Times Magazine.
The documentary Harry Benson: Shoot First which chronicles Harry’s 70-year career was released in December 2016 by Magnolia Pictures.
In 2009 Harry was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II for service to photography. Harry has received an Honorary Doctorate of Letter from St. Andrews University, Glasgow School of Art, Glasgow University, and Glasgow Caledonian University. An Honorary Fellow of London’s Royal Photographic Society, he has twice been named NPPA Magazine “Photographer of the Year.” In 2017 he received the prestigious Lifetime Achievement Award from the International Center of Photography. Harry is the only photographer to photograph the last 12 U.S. Presidents – from Dwight D. Eisenhower to Joe Biden.
Harry marched with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. during the civil rights movement, photographed the Watts Riots, was embedded in the Gulf War, was next to Senator Robert Kennedy when he was assassinated. Harry has photographed countless luminaries including Muhammed Ali, Sir Winston Churchill, Jackie Kennedy, President Charles de Gaulle, Michael Jackson, The Rolling Stones, Elizabeth Taylor, Jack Nicholson, Andy Warhol, Francis Bacon, Kate Moss, and the British Royal Family, including a private sitting with Queen Elizabeth II at Buckingham Palace. Harry has had 40 gallery/museum solo exhibitions of his work, and sixteen books of his photographs have been published.
Art credits, top to bottom: Bianca Jagger - Harry Benson, Liza and Halston NYC, 1978 - Harry Benson, Harry Benson - Gigi Benson, Truman Capote in Sand, 1982 - Harry Benson | A Moment In Time: Iconic Images By Harry Benson Gallery
SALLY MARTIN KATZ
Sally Martin Katz is a curator based in San Francisco, originally from New York City. For the past five years she has been working in the photography department at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA). Concurrently, she is a PhD candidate in Art History, specializing in History of Photography, at the Université Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne. As an independent curator, one of her current projects is guest curating the Louis Stettner retrospective at the Fundación MAPFRE in Madrid, opening May 2023, and she is the author of the exhibition catalogue. She has co-edited several books, including American Geography: Photographs of Land Use from 1840 to the Present (2021), snap+share: transmitting photographs from mail art to social networks (2019), and Louis Stettner: Traveling Light (2018), which accompanied the exhibitions at SFMOMA. While living in Paris, she worked at the Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson and the Musée du Louvre. She received a BA in Art History and French Literature from Brown University and earned an MA in Art History and an MFA in Photography from the Sorbonne.
