Object Lesson: On the Influence of Richard Benson

John Pilson has exhibited his photo and video work at Hamburger Kunsthalle, Germany; the Venice Biennale; Guggenheim Museum, Museum of Modern Art, and MoMA PS1, New York. He is the author of the monograph Interregna (2006) and founder of Picture Magazine. In addition to having taught at Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York, Pilson has served on the faculty of Yale School of Art since 2001 and is currently senior critic in photography. Dawoud Bey's numerous honors include a MacArthur Fellowship, Guggenheim Fellowship, and National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships. A major career retrospective of his work, An American Project, was co-organized by the Whitney Museum of American Art and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (2020-22). Bey is professor of art and a former Distinguished College Artist at Columbia College Chicago. His books include Class Pictures (Aperture, 2007), Seeing Deeply (2018), and Street Portraits (2021). Lois Conner is recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, New York State Council on the Arts Fellowship, and National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship. Publications of her work include China (2000), Beijing: Contemporary and Imperial (2014), and Lotus Leaves (2018). Conner has held teaching positions at Yale School of Art, Princeton University, and Sarah Lawrence College. Shannon Ebner is an artist who lives and works in Brooklyn. She has held solo exhibitions at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami, and MoMA PS1, New York, among others. Her publications include The Sun as Error (2009), STRIKE (2015), and A Public Character (2016). She is chairperson of photography at Pratt Institute. Peter Galassi is a scholar, curator, writer, and recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship. He was chief curator of photography at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, from 1991 to 2011. During that time, he curated more than forty exhibitions, including The Pleasures and Terrors of Domestic Pleasure (1991), Friedlander (2005), and Henri Cartier-Bresson: The Modern Century (2010). Lisa Kereszi has published three monographs of her work: Fantasies (2008), Fun and Games (2009), and Joe's Junk Yard (2012). In addition to teaching at the Hartford Art School, she is senior critic in photography at Yale School of Art, where she also serves as director of undergraduate studies. Susan Lipper has published her work in the trilogy of books comprised of Grapevine (1994), trip (1999), and Domesticated Land (2018). She is recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship, and Guggenheim Fellowship. Sarah Meister is executive director of Aperture, following more than twenty-five years at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, where she curated numerous exhibitions, including Fotoclubismo: Brazilian Modernist Photography, 1946-1964 (2021), Dorothea Lange: Words & Pictures (2020), and Making Space: Women Artists and Postwar Abstraction (cocurator, 2017). Paul Messier is the Pritzker Director of the Lens Media Lab at Yale's Institute for the Preservation of Cultural Heritage. The LML is dedicated to the material history of photography with a current focus on black-and-white photography of the twentieth century. His Boston-based conservation practice serves institutions and collectors worldwide. Abelardo Morell has published several books of his work, including A Camera in a Room (1995), A Book of Books (2002), Camera Obscura (2004), Abelardo Morell (2005), Tent-Camera (2018), and Flowers for Lisa (2018). Morell is recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and the International Center of Photography Infinity Award in Art. He was professor at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design in Boston from 1983 to 2010 and also served as chair of the department for many years. Arthur Ou has shown his work widely in group exhibitions in Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, London, Vancouver, Paris, Berlin, and Beijing. His writing has been published in the New York Times, Aperture, Blind Spot, Art in America,