6 spring street
new york city 10012
tel: 212.219.0166
info@jenbekman.com

benjamin donaldson

bio

Benjamin Donaldson was born in Hanover, New Hampshire in August of 1969. In 1998 he received his Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in photography from the Massachusetts College of Art. In 2001, he completed his Master of Fine Arts degree from Yale University School of Art. His photographs are in the collection of the Yale University Libraries as well as several private collections. Publications include Artnews, Details, The New Yorker, The New York Times, Nylon, The Manchester Guardian(UK) and The Yale University Literary Magazine. He is included in Photo District News "30" emerging photographers of 2003. He is on the faculty of the International Center of Photography, and has been a Guest Lecturer at Yale University School of Architecture and LaGuardia Community College. Benjamin Donaldson currently resides in Brooklyn, New York.

statement

It is my intent that these photographs contain some reminder of the natural world made for comfort and reassurance while I attempt to remain aware of the terrors inherent within that ideal. I am interested in these strange wonders sublimated by mass manufacture and faulty imagination, and the methods of how they retain the marks and outer appearances of these things we share the world with. From the kitsch of a butterfly puzzle, with the flight of their wings trapped by a single missing piece, to the areas we are sanctioned to enjoy a view, these spaces hold a power over me. These instances of the imitation and sublimation of nature become totems and reminders of the power in the grand, the savage, and the unknowable.

>> view work from benjamin's "mouth of the hudson" exhibition