<![CDATA[JOAN BENNETT PHOTOGRAPHY

A free spirit from the very beginning. I was born to a family of simple means yet was headed for a young life of travel and intrigue.

By the time I was Ten, I lived in North Carolina, California, Georgia, New Jersey, Taiwan, Baltimore, and Newport Rhode Island.   My father was an officer and my mother was an up and coming nurse.

Both sides of the family had strong ties to heritage and provided my sister, brother and I two uniquely beautiful summer homes.  Barnegat light New Jersey was bursting with family, great aunts and uncles, cousins and friends, coming and going. Boats tied to docks in the backyard. Days spent crabbing at the nearby sandbar, or biking to the ocean, evenings were waterskiing as the sunset, then home to a house of raucous adults cooking bushels of crabs for happy hour.

Truro Massachusetts was serene and stunning. A cottage on a dune overlooking Cape Cod bay. Grandparents from Boston with strong ideas about education and contribution. a CB radio played daily as my grandfather listened to the excitement of uncle bob and his crew fighting a seven hundred pound fish. Grandma and I would pick raspberries from the bushes that lined the street to the beach, then come home and bake. Nights were spent reading then drifting off to sleep next to grandma as she listened to news on her transistor radio.

These two places were my one constant.

There were more homes to come, but the most important one was West Point. This is where I began to take notice of the beauty that surrounded me. This place sits strategically above the Hudson River, so the views that surrounded our protected little city were magnificent. I could walk from one end of base to the next. Along the way were views of the mountains down to the river.  We were on a plateau in the Hudson valley with all these interesting things to look at all around. There were times when the fog would roll in and the light was so surreal, it felt like I was standing in someone’s painting.

On the weekends, the parade field would hold four thousand young men in dress grey uniforms, with shiny black shoes and mirror like belt buckles. There was so much grey.  The buildings that set the backdrop for the parade were grey
Here began my love of grey. Mom had an old Olympus, and one day, our car broke down as we were going over the mountain to Newburgh. My sister mary, mom and I walked down the mountain with moms old camera and took pictures of each other. When they were processed, there was this rich history of that day together along with a newly discovered art form. I was sixteen.

After two years in a liberal arts college, I decided to pursue this unknown world of photography at the fashion institute of technology. This was the 80’s…it was film. The darkroom was a favorite place where dreams came alive. The fashion world was alive with a young group of models, soon to become known by there first names.

I got a job with Ormond gigli, a well-known photographer. He shot twiggy and verushka. He printed his pictures like a master. My time with him was brief, as I left to have my first child.

Always shooting, and having a darkroom in my home, I began to apply the techniques of ansel adams, the zone system, to my work. I was a constant student of mastering the negative and the print.

Digital came around and I had little interest in delving into this technique, as I was raising children and still shooting film.
Eventually learning digital, I still do not feel comfortable manipulating the image. To me, what I see in front of me is what I want to express.

During my time in school, to manipulate an image was taboo to the masters of photography.

This brings me to today. My style is a constant. I would describe my work as painterly and tranquil. I still have that profound love of grey.

My wish for the viewer is to feel the Peace and tranquility that I do as the Artist.