Steven Benson teaching (image by Nicole Smith)

Steven- Prior to joining the photography faculty of Daytona State College, you had a long career as a freelance photographer, educator and writer. Could you tell us what led you to a career in photography?

Steven Benson (SB): When I was fourteen years old my parents sent me on a three-week camp bus trip across the western U.S. and north into Canada for the return to Michigan.  The plastic camera I used was like a Holga but without the frills.  I didn’t know at the time what the subjects I was photographing would look like as photographs.  When the pictures came back from the drugstore I was astounded by the difference between how the photographs looked in comparison to my memory of the subjects at the time the exposures were made.  I was not expecting the reductive qualities the photographs presented – two dimensional, motionless, silent and very small. Realizing this transformative power was a profoundly magical experience that continues to stay with me. What followed was a better camera - teaching myself how to process B&W film and print in a makeshift darkroom under the stairs in my parent’s basement.  I started photographing every day and it has never stopped.

SB: After completing my BFA I submitted an application to the Artist-in-Residence program administered through the Michigan Council for the Arts.  The program placed artists in underserved communities.  The opportunity was offered to me to work for a year in a rural part of Michigan with a ninety square mile school district.  It was a farming community where the school bus picked up some of the students at 5:00 AM in order for them to make it to class by 8:00 AM.  During the corn-harvesting season I remember students falling asleep in class because they were up all night to help their families with the harvest. It was during this residency that I realized the rewards of teaching.  My studio/darkroom was connected to the bus garage (the exhaust fumes were a little strong in the morning).  It was here that I witnessed the sheer joy of students who never thought about doing anything ‘creative’ discover aspects of themselves that changed their view of who they were and what they can become.  It was because of this experience that I hoped to be able to devote myself to teaching full-time at some point in my life. 

After completing my residency I continued teaching as an adjunct at colleges and universities in the Detroit metropolitan area for the next twenty years while running my studio, working as a freelance photographer and completing my MFA.  In 2000 I was offered a full-time teaching position at the College for Creative Studies.  I gave up my studio and have been able to “live my dream” ever since while still accepting freelance assignments on a selective basis. 

 

SB: My freelance photography has been wide-ranging including studio and location work for publishers, marketing firms, advertising agencies and Fortune 500 companies.  Within these realms I’ve done product, annual report, industrial, portraiture, automotive, editorial, food, travel, aerial, medical, underwater, architecture, photo-illustration…I love it all!  A particularly memorable assignment was for Unisys Corporation. Traveling with two scale models of mainframe computers and four equipment cases (in one trip) I was flown to shoots at the New York Stock Exchange followed by Rio de Janeiro to shoot an Amazonian Indian taking a computer back to his village in a dugout canoe; Tokyo – a Monk checking out a computer at a Sumo Wrestling shrine; Moscow – a Russian police officer interacting with a computer in Red Square; Paris – a child on a tricycle opening a door on the computer along the Seine River with Notre Dame in the background and finishing at a manufacturing facility in Cheboygan, Michigan.  The best thing about this job was that the concept was my idea.  We were planning to do the same thing at the Seven Wonders of the World when IBM did it before we could get started(!)  Everyone believed IBM was influenced after they saw our campaign. My students greatly appreciate the international real-world experience I bring into the classroom.  So, I’m not only teaching them how to modulate light sources or digital techniques to achieve desired results – it’s also about living the life of a professional photographer. It is worth nothing that my interest in commercial photography is largely based on its ability to support my personal work».

From a purely philosophical position I understand (via Jean Baudrillard at a picnic in Arles) that the “photograph is not a document – it is a fiction”. To move this idea to the next level, based on an understanding of ‘reality’ as a construction, the photograph is a fiction about a fiction.  Within documentary photographic practice there is always that edge we often have to walk between the desire to make aesthetically engaging photographs while at the same time not allowing that desire to overtake the subject of the photograph. In my case it is a tendency toward the surreal with strong visual dynamics. In a related sense I see sophisticated photographs that achieve this balance as marking points in space where internal and external intersect. I am acutely aware of my personal conceptual armature and don’t allow it to direct my analysis of student work (although I would admit it has influenced the selection of student work reproduced here). My goal as a teacher is to help students identify their photographic paths and help them succeed in perfecting their skill-sets and intellectual depth. I try to accomplish this by using an open system whenever possible to allow students the ability to respond to assignments in a way that is personally meaningful to them in the hope that the resulting photographs can contribute to building their portfolios.

SB: I see my involvement with SPE as a member of the National Board of Directors and the American Society of Media Photographers as a General Member and serving on the Board of Directors for the Central Florida Chapter as an extension of my commitment to education and the profession of photography. This is not new territory for me. I’ve headed up several non-profit arts organizations prior to my arrival in Florida. My hope is that through my example students will consider taking on leadership roles wherever they may professionally land. I try to stress the importance of not simply being an observer of their surroundings but the significance of being active participants in the world – that their actions can make a difference.