JOAN BENNEY

Joan was born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area. Her first artistic influence was her mother who often had a sewing project underway on the dining room table, amidst whatever else was going on. She was "poetry in motion" before Joan ever knew what that was. So began her relationship with the essence of a process and the poetry inherent in how one engages it. As a teenager she was given "50 Poems" by E E Cummings. She filled endless notebooks with her poems, some not bad. Some, quite. She was looking for a way to fuse the outer world with her inner life. This led her to the camera. She told her family she would be a photographer. She met a painter. He taught her about the importance of keeping a studio and how to care for it. They fell in love and had a daughter. This transformative process led her back to the camera, with more focus. Joan lived on a rural island off the coast of Washington for 22 years. Raising her daughter in the rustic, arcadian environment of the island deeply influenced her approach and inspiration as a photographer. She found metaphor in outlying orchards, mirroring her own inner wilds and those of the people she photographed. It was here she began a more personal exploration of environment and identity from a female perspective, through a biophilic lens.

Joan studied wet darkroom photography at The Photographic Center Northwest in Seattle, Washington.

She lives and works in San Francisco, Ca.