Nathan Benn
American, born 1950
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BiographyBenn was born in 1950 to Jewish parents and grew up in Miami, Florida. He was a photographer for his high school paper, and then graduated from the University of Miami with degrees in psychology mass communication. While attending the university, he worked as a photographer for the "Miami News" and the "Palm Beach Post." Right after graduation, in June 1972, he went to Washington D.C. for an internship at "National Geographic" magazine and was subsequently hired as a contact photographer, working largely with color. He exhibited some of his color work early in the 1970's and is considered part of the New Color Photography movement in America. After twenty years as a photojournalist, he put down his camera in 1991 and stored his archive of photographs. Benn went on to work on online platforms and other projects and was president of the New York-based photo collective Magnum Photos Inc. from 2000-2002. After the Eastman Kodak Company announced it was ceasing production of its Kodachrome film after 74 years, Benn revisited his holdings of about 350,000 unpublished transparencies from the 1970's and 1980's taken during his travels and assignments for "National Geographic" and "GEO" magazines. While few facilities had ever been equipped to process Kodachrome, the last one standing was Dwayne's Photo in Parsons, Kansas, which continued to work with Kodachrome from June 2009 through the end of 2010, Benn took his transparencies there. He lives with his wife Rebecca Abrams in Brooklyn, New York and Santa Fe, New Mexico.
