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Martin Benjamin has been photographing and making pictures since 1970. He has taught at Union College since 1979 and is a Professor of Art in the Visual Arts Department. Martin Benjamin's life and work over the past twenty-eight years have been punctuated by events, picture-making aesthetics, technical exploration, trips and classes which have shaped and directed the body of work in this exhibition. The exhibition, in turn, is organized in relation to these landmarks: trips to Italy, China, and England; images of his wife Donna, editorial work; infrared and tri-x film; and Good Shots - the ongoing series of pictures born of Benjamin's photography class for adult clients of the Schenectady Association for Retarded Citizens. This project earned Benjamin the 1997 Golden Light Award for Photography Educator of the Year, awarded by the Maine Photographic Workshops in Rockport, Maine. the resulting exhibition, GOOD SHOTS: Photographs Of and By People with Disabilities, has traveled and received national attention. In his early pictures, as
in his recent work, Benjamin presents the viewer with a
distinctive vision of the world in which reality is consistently
defined in human terms. A great many of his photographs involve
the human figure. They are not necessarily portraits; rather the
figure seems to function, in both formal and emotional terms, as
an anchor point of reference. Without even realizing it perhaps,
we locate these images in terms of ourselves. Benjamin's
pictures keep us firmly connected to the world and to each
other.
To view photographs by Martin Benjamin
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