Being There: Photography of Harry Benson

Harry Benson has enjoyed an extraordinary and unprecedented career as a photojournalist gaining access to some of the key figures of the last fifty years often at decisive moments of history. His work, plotted across the pages of the most influential and culturally significant magazines and newspapers of the twentieth century, charts a fascinating course mapping the worlds of politics and culture, sport and fashion and the stellar successes and crashing failures of celebrity. He developed a forensic eye for creating memorable pictures of defining personalities and events of the moment. Born in Glasgow, he travelled with the Beatles on their first visit to America and he has lived there ever since. This book, which accompanies the summer show at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh, illustrates many of his most iconic images placing them within the context of the shifting fashions and fortunes of an editorial industry of which he has always been a champion.