HARRY BENSON: 50 YEARS Exhibition Celebrates Release of Once There Was A Way: Photographs of The Beatles"

Monroe Gallery of Photography, 112 Don Gaspar, is pleased to announce HARRY BENSON: 50 YEARS", a major retrospective exhibition celebrating the publication of his newest book Once There Was A Way: Photographs Of The Beatles". Public opening reception on Friday, November 28, 5-8 PM. The exhibition continues through January 11, 2004.

(PRWEB) November 24, 2003 --A native of Glasgow, Scotland, Harry came to America with The Beatles in 1964, and made New York his home. He began working for LIFE Magazine in 1967, and continued to photograph for LIFE until 2002. Now under contract with Vanity Fair and The New Yorker, his photographs have appeared in countless major magazines and newspapers throughout the world.

From their first tour in Paris in 1964 until their last tour in America in 1966, Harry Benson accompanied The Beatles and chronicled their transformation into legends of rock music. He was witness to their most exciting moments, public and private. Among his many memorable images of this period is the photograph of the pillow fight the Beatles had in their Paris hotel room upon learning that I Want To Hold Your Hand" had become the number one song on the American pop charts.

Yes, it was the music, yes, it was the hair, yes, it was Ed Sullivan. But it was also the vibrant photography, particularly Bensons, that helped create the mania, setting off a seismic shift in American culture" LIFE: 100 Photographs That Changed The World, Life Books. p. 63.

He was just steps from Bobby Kennedy the night the senator was shot, steps from Coretta Scott King at her husband's funeral, steps from Richard Nixon the day the president resigned in disgrace. He was on hand for the Freedom March through Mississippi, the Watts riots, the I.R.A. hunger strikes, the fall of Czechoslovakia and Romania and the Berlin Wall. He was invited by Jackie Kennedy to shoot her daughter Caroline's wedding (to Edwin Schlossberg), invited into Michael Jackson's bedroom (to take baby pictures of Jackson's son Prince), invited into Elizabeth Taylor's hospital suite (to photograph the star, bald, after brain surgery).
Flip through the book Harry Benson: Fifty Years in Pictures (Abrams) and one gets the eerie impression that for half a century he has been nothing less than photojournalism's Zelig--the man who happens to materialize, with a camera, whenever history envelops the high and mighty. He covered every president since Eisenhower, the first US casualty in Bosnia, firefights in Kosovo, the pall of smoke above the Twin Towers' wreckage on September 11, 2001. Before there was a 24-hour news cycle, before there was a CNN or a FOX, there was The Fox, a lone lensman from Scotland with a hungry eye trained upon the world's public prey." -- David Friend, Editor, Vanity Fair
Harrys photographs have been exhibited internationally, including National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian, Washington, DC; Royal Museum of Scotland, British Museum of Photography; Museum of Rome; Newseum Museum, Alexandria, VA and New York City; and S. M. U. School of Journalism, Dallas, TX. There have been several books of his photographs published, including The President and Mrs. Reagan, Harry Benson: 50 Years in Pictures, The Beatles: In the Beginning, Harry Benson's People, Harry Benson on Photojournalism, and First Families: An Intimate Portrait from JFK to Clinton. Harry Bensons America will be published in 2004.
Harry has twice been named Magazine Photographer of the Year by the National Press Photographers Association, twice received the Leica Medal of Excellence, has won the Overseas Press Club Madeline Dane Ross Award, and was awarded the 1996 PMDA Professional Photographer Award.
Monroe Gallery of Photography was founded by Sidney S. Monroe and Michelle A. Monroe. Building on more than four decades of collective experience, the gallery specializes in classic black & white photography with an emphasis on humanist and photojournalist imagery. The gallery also represents a select group of contemporary and emerging photographers.

Gallery hours are 10 to 6 Monday through Saturday, 10 to 5 Sunday. Admission is free. For further information, or to arrange an interview with Harry Benson, please call: 505.992.0800; E-mail: info@monroegallery.com.
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