At 94, photographer Harry Benson hasn’t just been a witness to history, he has chronicled it.
The Scottish-born, New York-based talent is set to unveil “Harry Benson: Washington D.C. Iconic Photographs for the Nation’s Capital” in the Beltway on Wednesday. Located in a gallery next to the Capital One Arena, the show will feature 160 photographs including many of politicians and other cultural figures like The Beatles during their first trip to the U.S. Having known every U.S. president since Harry S. Truman, Benson shared his insights about various presidents, image making and the current state of politics in an interview with WWD.
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Timed for the height of the presidential election season, the free show is being presented by Monumental Sports & Entertainment, Ted and Lynn Leonsis, and Jeff Skoll. Washington, D.C. is a city that Benson has his own history with. He explained, “It was always a good place to go, because I would always find a story. But you don’t like to boast and sound off about the work that you’ve done. You sound like a jerk for doing that.”
After working at The Daily Sketch and The Daily Express, Benson shot for Life magazine, Vanity Fair and Women’s Wear Daily for a spell. No matter the subject, Benson, a Commander of the Order of the British Empire, is a photojournalist at heart. Along with the fall of Czechoslovakia, IRA hunger strikes, and POW camps in Afghanistan, he has captured other historical moments such as the chaos after Robert F. Kennedy was shot in 1968 and former president Richard Nixon’s resignation in 1974.
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“Basically, what you do as a photographer is you photograph what you see, and what you see should inform,” Benson said. “You do your job, and get as close to your subject as you can.”
Sometimes that proximity was driven by gumption. After reading in a daily press bulletin from Buckingham Palace in 1962 that Jackie Kennedy and her sister Lee Radziwill were expected for lunch with Queen Elizabeth II, he ran there, and caught a smiling Kennedy waving as their limousine was entering at the gate. Benson said that when he once showed the image to a friend of Kennedy’s, the friend immediately knew it had been taken before 1963. Asked how he knew, “the friend simply replied, ‘Because Jackie never smiled that way again after 1963,’” according to Benson. Another photo in the show is of Trisha Nixon looking on as her sister Julie Eisenhower tried on a seafoam-colored Priscilla of Boston maid of honor dress in the White House’s Lincoln Bedroom in 1971. (Benson had been tapped by Richard Nixon to be the photographer for Trisha Nixon’s wedding.)
The following year, Benson traveled with the then-President Nixon to Moscow (for a summit with the Communist Party’s then-general secretary Leonid Brezhnev.) Interestingly, Nixon, who was forced to resign after the Watergate scandal, was probably Benson’s favorite president. “He was an interesting character. The more you did [with him], the more he tried to help you [whether that be a seat on his plane for diplomatic trips or an invitation to stay for dinner, when shooting Nixon in his ‘Western White House’ in San Clemente, Calif.,”] Benson said. “It’s hard not to like somebody, who gives us the access that we need to do our jobs properly.”
Even during the two-year-plus Watergate scandal, Nixon kept the doors open for the press, according to Benson, who said his fellow photographers at the Associated Press, UPI, Time magazine and Newsweek “would probably say that Nixon was the best at treating us with respect.”
Benson took Nixon’s portrait after being forced to resign in August 1974. “It was sad. Pat Nixon couldn’t control herself and started to cry. She was [normally] a very careful lady,” Benson said. “You knew that Watergate was tearing him apart. You could see that he was definitely feeling it. I’ve always said that he was a lot more emotional than he was given credit for. I’d seen him weeping on a couple of occasions.”
As for whether Nixon’s parting handshake was a sign of respect, Benson said, “Maybe. I don’t go into that too deeply. All I’m thinking about is, ‘Did I get a photograph that day that the office is going to be happy about? Am I going to get a good shot?'”
All in all, Jack Kennedy was “the complete opposite of Nixon. And Jackie was a glamorous woman and a great asset to him,” he said. Recalling how first ladies’ fashion was such a point of conversation that a fashion editor would travel abroad for official presidential visits, Benson acknowledged how the years of first ladies being criticized for their fashion and talking about fashion are long gone.
Having seen firsthand the power of first lady fashion, Benson remembered being part of the press corps on one of Jackie Kennedy’s trips to Paris that caused a sensation, “because people knew she would be judged by the French. And she was,” Benson said. “When Jackie came out, she was like ooh-la-la. There was Jackie and there was de Gaulle’s wife, [Yvonne,] an old woman,” said Benson [laughing at the recollection.]
After John F. Kennedy’s assassination in 1963, photographers tended to only catch glimpses of her getting in and out of cars, Benson said. However, in 1968, he shot the former first lady wearing a ski mask with sunglasses on top of her head in Canada’s Laurentian Mountains. However candid that image might seem, it was not. “She was always aware of what she was doing, as they all are,” Benson said.
Benson also photographed Kennedy’s brother Robert during his presidential run, and during a family vacation along Idaho’s “River of No Return.” Sadly, in June of 1968, Benson was in the Ambassador Hotel’s kitchen when Robert F. Kennedy was shot, after winning the California presidential primary. “I was about 4 or 5 yards away, when it happened. [His wife] Ethel was screaming. It was a hellish, hellish scene,” Benson said. “The last thing Bobby had said to me was, ‘Harry, I’ll see ya in Chicago.’ And then he was gone.”
Instinctively, Benson picked up his camera. “If I hadn’t reacted like a photographer, it would have haunted me for the rest of my life. What do you do?” he asked rhetorically.
His image of Ethel Kennedy’s outstretched arm and hand blocking his camera’s lens will be on view in the exhibition. “She was protecting him,” Benson said, adding that others had tried, too. “It wasn’t three cheers for the photographer at that moment. I can understand it because a camera is very aggressive in a traumatic situation…,” Benson said. “You knew Bobby was seriously hurt. I can’t walk away from something hellish that is happening around me, I still have the memories of the screaming — not nightmares. There was Bobby on the ground with blood coming out of the side of his head. He must have laid on that kitchen floor for half an hour, before they got him away. It was utter chaos. They must be so much more capable of handling something now.”
Benson also offered his impressions of the current and former presidents. He described President Joe Biden as “a bit boring, a bit nervous.” As for photographing former president Donald Trump, whom Benson first photographed in his real estate developer years, Benson said, “You’re not going to see him with a girl or his wife or anybody else — it’s only him. You see that it’s only him — no one is going to steal the show from him.”
Asked about Barack Obama, Benson said, “Obama was cold. He never knew how to smile right. If you spoke with him, it was quite sharp.”
Regarding Bill Clinton, Benson said, “Oh, he was good because he liked people. He liked to be taken as a reasonably good guy, and he was attractive. He knew what you wanted, and he would do it. He would find a few moments in the day to chat nicely with the press and not talk down to them. He would talk about nothing, but still in a friendly way.”
All in all, Benson finds the current political scene as “dull. It doesn’t mean anything. It doesn’t have the drama that they had before,” he said. “You don’t see very good photographs of the candidates — candid. You don’t see them at home, or campaigning with people [to the degree that] the Kennedys or other presidential candidates did,” Benson said. “There are no interesting personalities. No one is making great speeches. And the people don’t seem to care. There’s no glamour. Maybe the glamour has been taken out of the presidency.“