Photographing the Past with Benjamin Swett
Join us via Zoom on Wednesday, November 18th, at 7 pm ET
Writer and Photographer Benjamin Swett discusses a problem that has long perplexed and intrigued him: how can a camera, which can capture only the present moment, document the past? A tree contains growth layers indicating precise information about all that has happened around it during its lifetime. A house contains objects indicating different periods in the lives of those who have inhabited it. But a photograph is a flat, uni-dimensional object containing neither layers nor rooms, representing a single moment in time. Yet many photographers find themselves trying to locate–and communicate–huge histories through those single moments. How has this been tried, and how can it be done?
Benjamin Swett is a writer and photographer whose books include the essay collection The Picture Not Taken: On Life and Photography and the photo-text narratives Route 22 and New York City of Trees (winner of the New York City Book Award for Photography). His essays have appeared in Agni, Arnoldia, Salmagundi, Orion, The New York Review of Books Online, Prism International, and Fiction. Four were Notable Essays in Best American Essays. He is senior photographer for the Notion Archaeological Project in Turkey and was named the 2024 Larry Lederman Photography Fellow at the New York Botanical Garden. His photographs are in private, corporate, and public collections including the Museum of the City of New York and The New York Botanical Garden.
