Photo by Keith Benoist
"Old Car Outside Hattiesburg."
“There are things of interest everywhere you go, every day.” With this philosophy, Natchez photographer Keith Benoist finds himself most mornings hunched on riverbanks or standing at attention as fog rolls through the landscape. He and his camera gear are waiting for the beauty of the day to reveal itself.
Benoist’s work leaves him isolated; he likes it that way. In solitude, he’s privileged to witness the rarer sights of nature. As he set up at the Cocodrie Wildlife Refuge one recent morning, a sunning, jelly-rolled otter blocked his path on the manmade walkway. “What is that experience worth? You can’t purchase it,” said Benoist. “You can go to a zoo and see a caged otter, but how many people get to see one in the wild?”
He’s learned to sidle up to his potential subjects, eliminating unworthy elements from his camera frame. “The key to photography, the one piece of advice I give people, and I don’t consider myself an expert—I tell them to get closer to your subject.”
When he does find evidence of people, like the well-weathered car pictured, he lets his imagination go. “I find it interesting that’s the car’s still there but the people aren’t,” said Benoist. “I have to wonder if this car was ever parked in Winslow, Arizona, as a girl passed by in a Flatbed Ford and slowed down to take a look at the owner, standing on the corner? My apologies to The Eagles.”
Benoist might prefer the company of the eagles on Lake St. John, but his creative work does bring him in contact with strangers. He warms to their feedback. “If what you spend a great deal of time and money on can make one person’s day better, that’s worth it,” said Benoist.
Details on Relics 2016, our ongoing photography series, can be found here.
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