Benton-Harris, John

Although primarily a self-taught photographer, Benton-Harris attended the Design Laboratory classes led by Alexey Brodovitch, the graphic designer and photographer best known as the influential art director of Harper's Bazaar in the 1940s and 1950s. Benton-Harris began his career in 1961 as a staff photographer for the Sinclair Refining Corporation. After serving in the U.S. Army in Italy from 1963 to 1965, he relocated to Britain and began working as a photojournalist, initially for London Life magazine and then for other newspapers and magazines. In 1970, Benton-Harris turned to a career as an independent photographer and began exhibiting his work at galleries and museums in the United States and Europe. As a New York-born artist and a longtime resident of the United Kingdom, many of Benton-Harris's photographs offer a wry take on British culture, as in the image Winston Churchill Victory Ashtray-Made from Battle of Britain Air Plane Scrap, Antique Shop Window, Lower Addiscrombe Road, Croydon Surrey, England (1990). Benton-Harris was a visiting professor at various colleges and universities, and a guest curator at institutions such as the Barbican Art Gallery, London.