Artist’s Statement:
"The Secret of Photography..."
As a child I grew up in a rural area with innocent pastimes: simple things like baseball, fishing, collecting baseball cards and playing with Matchbox cars. There were no computers, no internet, no malls: just Main Street, the corner store, trout streams, and simple toys.
I remember atomic bomb tests, the Cuban missile crisis, the Kennedy assassinations. The moment is still clear to me when I was in the back seat of our family's Buick Special and a guy was singing "Eve of Destruction" on the radio. I also remembering listening to the Cassius Clay/Sonny Liston fight on a transistor radio in the dark in bed, and the exhilaration that finally a good guy who was given no chance had won. Finally. I vividly remember seeing my first color TV. It was my Uncle Dick’s new TV and I remember thinking that something was wrong, something was missing. I thought my family's black and white was much more interesting and closer to the truth. I realized I was right much later when I read what Gary Winogrand had to say about his work: "I photograph to see what things look like photographed."
As a college student and a beginning photographer I photographed protests against the Vietnam War. I remember learning that our President knowingly lied about the war when he said on TV: "We are not bombing Cambodia." One day, after a protest march, I walked into the college center and everyone was sobbing. I asked someone what had happened and she said,"They are shooting students in Ohio." I realized what Diane Arbus meant when she said, "Photographing is not about being comfortable, either for the photographer or the subject."
As a photographer, I respond to what looks beautiful, engaging, or intriguing. I like pictures that ask questions. Photography has been my vehicle into other worlds and others’ lives and it has enabled me to experience things more deeply and more richly. As Walker Evans wrote, "The secret of photography is that the camera takes on the character and personality of the handler. The mind works on the machine." I learned early that photographs can make a difference. I don't make them solely as evidence, but to communicate to others the ideas and expressions that have changed my own approach to life.
Martin Benjamin, March, 2004 |
