A DAY WITH GAVIN BENJAMIN

INDULGING IN BEAUTY:

A DAY WITH PHOTOGRAPHER GAVIN BENJAMIN

By David Bernabo

Going into my interview with photographer Gavin Benjamin, I realized my knowledge of his work was a little outdated. In 2014, we did a show together as part of the Casey Droegecurated portion of the Pittsburgh Biennial. In what is now the Miller ICA, I collected field recordings and vocal pieces for a series of 7” records, while Gavin’s majestic still life photographs filled each wall of the room. Bathed in aged lacquer, the photographs felt otherworldly, like scenes from a different time and place--pillaged fruits and emptied clamshells, melted candles and shards of glass, elaborate floral arrangements and animal skulls. These were scenes of decadence, use, and unfinished business, cast in deep, rich colors against a black void.

Since the time of that “Old World Luxuries” series, Gavin has explored other topics--scenes from the vacated Alcoa building, floral studies, and a new, ongoing series called “Heads of State.”

I meet Gavin at his studio in the Radiant Hall Lawrenceville building. When I arrive, he is painting the floor. Like many of the Radiant Hall studio spaces, the studio is a room carved out of a larger room, a semi-controlled setting made for creating art. His art--pieces from different series and scraps from photo collages decorate the space.

Gavin’s take on Monet’s Water Lilies series is like an Impressionistic version of an Impressionist painting. Sections of the photograph are cut out and raised half a centimeter, creating a 3D space and emphasizing certain shapes and colors. This 3D technique was also used on a series of photographs documenting a depopulated Alcoa building. The raised surfaces highlight the sharp lines of glass and light that wrap around the well-designed structure.

After a glance around the studio, we walk a short distance to Gavin’s home for a deeper discussion. In addition to a living and entertaining space, his apartment acts a showcase room to let potential clients view his work in a home setting. The walls are tastefully lined with photographs from his different series. Most striking is a set of photo collages collectively titled “Heads of State.” These are relatively small works, and they feature the collage aspect that runs through much of Gavin’s output.

“There are some original photographs, but it’s found images,” says Gavin. “This right here is a Versace shirt. Here’s a Gucci sweatshirt--all these things mixed in from fashion, politics, art, design.”

The “Heads of State” works are relatively flat images where patterns and context-heavy clippings brush up against each other. There will be 24 pieces in total, each contributing to a larger, overarching story--the reinvention and reimagining of family elders and the reinterpretation of history lost to skewed worldviews. “We live in a world that is changing, and we don’t really celebrate who came before us, because all we think about is now. So, I wanted to reinvent that history in a way that was more approachable for me. So, it’s a combination of fiction and history.”

Poses pulled from paintings of the Borgias and Medicis are transposed onto the stories of Arab and African leadership. Shown in groupings, the pieces in the series speak to one another, mixing subtle and not-so-subtle political statements with self-portraiture and inside jokes about fashion.

“A really good friend of mine said, ‘you can make the most fuck-up political shit, but if it’s not beautiful, no one will hang it.’ That stuck in my head. When you think about what people have to live with day to day [in their homes], the end result has to be interesting, beautiful. It has to touch them in a way.”

Gavin was drawn to photography because of the lushness of the image. He thinks of his photographs as mini-movies--tons of details captured in one image.

“I always wanted to be an artist, but I never enjoyed taking drawing classes. It was boring. I needed a medium that changed faster, that I could really play with. The whole idea of painting something and sitting there for hours and days...I can work on 20 things at one time when I have my studio set up. It’s a lot of back and forth, and that helps to keep things alive.”

Standing in Gavin’s apartment, surrounded by works from different periods, it’s easy to see an evolution and how there exists a unique artistic language. Heavy lacquer gives way to raised surfaces to collage, all with a deep sense of atmosphere and intention.

We end the day with an informal walking tour through Lawrenceville. Gavin has begun a new, personal series more closely linked to photojournalism than his recent photography and collage work. It’s a series about the changing state of Lawrenceville, namely the impacts of gentrification and overdevelopment, and it’s a chance for Gavin to nurture the documentary

side of his photography again. As we walk through the new apartment complexes that tower above the comparatively small residential homes, we discuss the Venn diagram that is uninspired architecture and runaway greed-nearly a complete circle. We run into fellow residents and hear tales of drunk brewery patrons pissing on the fences of longtime residents, and developers building fortresses around one-time quiet homes. It’s a beautiful, warm day in the middle of winter, but there’s a sadness in the air, a series of missed opportunities that were sacrificed to opportunism, signs of a neighborhood that is over.

Adjacent to the story of longtime residents is a community of small business owners opening their dream stores, trying to duke it out in oversaturated markets, and living, quite literally, for the weekend when stores are busy and patrons are spending. Then there are the developers, jumping in and out of neighborhoods as if they are playing the stock market--high risk, high reward, no questions asked. The story of Lawrenceville (or really any neighborhood that is changing) is a multi-tiered story of struggle, a struggle to find the balance of moving forward without throwing away all of the past.

The arts is a way to mark those changes and provide space for reflection, to tell stories in a different way.

“We’re in a very tumultuous time, a dark time. And in dark times, we need to capture stories and to tell those stories without banging people over the head. We need to remind people of what came before and how we can bridge a gap between past and present, what worked and what didn’t. And there’s a lot of shit in the past that didn’t work.”