Eileen Benjamin & Taylor, 2000 Photo: Jay Dusard.

Eileen Benjamin is recognized as one of the most accomplished black and white photographers in the state of Colorado. As a former San Francisco Bay area resident, her focus had been on the man-made beauties of bridges and buildings in the midst of the bustling Silicon Valley. There, she had been a project coordinator at the Lockheed Corporation, where she developed an appreciation for creativity, technical detail and precision performance. After moving to Telluride in 1985, the goal of Benjamin's photography evolved to reflect God's natural beauty, scope and complexity of the San Juan Mountains and its people.

Benjamin's early work was with a 4x5 film camera--she has since migrated to digital formats. She lives for light and finds its full spectrum within the landscapes and portraits she photographs. By working in black and white, she finds that details within the full range of light have room to come into focus. Every element of the photograph—the subject, the shadows, the subtleties, the nuances, the illusions, the dreams—has time to unfold in both the photographer's and the viewer's eye when seen in black and white.

Along with photographs by Edward Curtis and paintings by Charles Russell, Frederic Remington and Thomas Moran, Eileen's photography was part of a collection of Art of the American West, exhibited at the U.S. Embassy in Spain. Her photographs are included in personal and corporate collections throughout the United States and abroad.

Benjamin's first book, If You Listen: Poems & Photographs of the San Juan Mountains, was done in collaboration with poet Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer. Other publications by Benjamin include Telluride, Landscapes and Dreams, with a foreword by Jay Dusard, and A Spiritual Connection, Living on the Edge of the American Rockies. She is currently working on her fourth book, The Fabric of a Woman, A Celebration, which is a mixed media project utilizing her photography skills along with paper making.

During the past five years, Benjamin has been traveling abroad, primarily to developing countries, capturing the landscapes and the essence of the people who inhabit these lands.



© Eileen Benjamin. All rights reserved.

A substantial portion of Eileen’s lecture will include images and conversation based on her forthcoming book, The Fabric of a Woman, A Celebration. Through this project, Benjamin has captured the timeless cross-cultural experiences of womanhood, from both a national and international perspective. She combines photographs of the women in her life with hand-crafted papers and other mixed-media to create sensitive, thought-provoking images.

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