©Benton Hamilton, Cloud, cyanotype on paper, n.d.

A well-known teacher on the campus of Maine Media Workshops, Benton Hamilton is a leading educator and photography historian. Giving special instruction about the craft of images and methodology. Brenton’s work is collected and exhibited internationally and held in the permanent collections of: The Farnsworth Art Museum, The Portland Museum of Art, Portland, Maine and The University of New England and the Lamar Dodd Art Center’s permanent collection in Georgia and recently, the Colby College Museum collection. The photographic work is represented by TILT Gallery in Scottsdale, AZ and frequently shown in Maine at The Page Gallery in Camden and recently exhibitions with the Maine Museum of Photographic Art in Portland. In 2017, The University of Maine Museum of Art, Bangor, Maine installed a mid-career retrospective of his decades of practice. In 2022, Hamilton, began lecturing on topics in photography at The University of Texas in the Lower Rio Grande Valley.

In September 2020 Schilt Publishing, Amsterdam, released a 25 year retrospective monograph: with an essay by Lyle Rexer, A Blue Idyll- Cyanotypes and Dreams. 

An interview with the artist follows.

©Benton Hamilton, Collage_Fragment_cyanotype on paper, n.d.

STW: Thank you so for taking the time out of your busy schedule for this interview Brenton. You are an extraordinary artist, a renowned historian, and an inspiring instructor. I would particularly like to talk to you today about your teaching career. Having been in education for 33 years you have made a profound contribution to the arts with the many students who have worked with you over the years.

STW: What do you think makes a good teacher?

BH: I believe it requires looking forward – and being invested in assisting a process that has many complex layers. So, being a good teacher or mentor asks us to fulcrum an awareness toward our student about “what might be”. It is encompassing. It’s a lifestyle, putting the teaching first. It takes patience and conviction – and the ability to walk with the student. Everyone is different, so you have to be very sensitive to that. It is just not a cookie cutter process.

©Benton Hamilton, Gesturing Lady, cyanotype on paper, n.d.

STW: What compelled you to become a teacher?

BH: I recall sitting in small classrooms at the Maine Photographic Workshops and listening to Kate Carter describe my work (I was 18 years old) and Craig Stevens describing photography as a ‘Life”. To remember those moments over so many decades, says something about those two teachers. They were profound exchanges, and I felt moved. There are many ways to give instruction, but it is a very particular kind of work that requires words and actions. It requires being thoughtful – placing yourself within the sphere of what the student is doing. I might present something and not expect it to mean anything until later. You lay some basic groundwork – you put down a few bricks and it might be a path. So, I just mean that a few more ideas are laid down for your mentee to engage, or perhaps dismiss, or experiment with curiosity. There is a knife-edge between “telling” a student what to do and helping them to see further. That is something it takes a seasoned teacher to be able to do. I engage by doing a lot of listening and a lot of looking and remembering, when I’m working with someone. So, I carry a catalog of their work with me. I’m very interested in that. It is part of the pleasure of teaching, to imagine what a group of work might become. I try to help shape work that has a context so that there is a cogent group that is fully realized. When I mention that I don’t suggest a tight edit in say 3 weeks. I mean that the pictures have to assert a long form rapport. The grow upon themselves. They inform the maker, the viewer, and that’s very challenging for anyone to do and it takes its own time.

©Benton Hamilton, Figure, 3 color gum_on paper, n.d.

STW: You are an enthusiastic and inspiring lecturer on photographic history. What got you so hooked on art history and what was your inspiration.

BH: The cultural arc of the history of photography is among my greatest passions. The story of photography’s development is so relevant, as images are tethered to culture itself. I believe it is important work to explain this and give a deeper context. The inspiration is often the complexities of the images themselves – as they stand in as surrogates and mirror cultural stories. That’s among my jobs as a historian – building context and placing these ideas within societies breadth. My interest in the history of photography developed hand in hand.
My first experiences were with platinum and palladium printing, and I just took to it immediately. I was drawn to the sound of the brush, the composition of metals and then coating a piece of paper. It was thrilling to make something with the hand and it led to many things. That was the first experience, and the history of photography was a close second, but it was realized very quickly. The study of the visual history of the medium is the greatest pleasure in my life. I’m 33 years into this and I am constantly immersed in the material, constantly preparing for something new to discuss and present and to say that it thrills me is accurate. I feel like I am participating in the trajectory of the medium, which is under dramatic evolution, one that is so consequential. It is a powerful story. It is the foundation of the medium and a means to understand the present. It feels very much like a mission, as it is a dynamic cultural story, and I feel like a storyteller, making connections for a new context of how images are tethered to our society. I remain devoted to the scholarship and study. It means a lot to me to do this work.

©Benton Hamilton, Studio, platinum, n.d.

STW: You are an accomplished artist; how do you balance your own work with teaching?

BW: I’ve developed a habit of working very intensely in short periods of time. It isn’t easy, because I hope that when I’m teaching, I approach it with as much intention and sharpness as when I’m at the studio table staring and thinking. The balance has a habit of collapsing though. I humbly admit my balancing is imperfect. I like telling people I am a storyteller. I wear two coats. The art and the scholar parts of me. I try to keep them separate. They are different kinds of work. As a historian, I have read so much, that I can tell a story deeply, but I also have my own ideas to suggest because I also know European and American social history. That’s why I can get up there and talk about history in an off-the-cuff manner. It took me a long time to get to that point, probably 15 years. I am still devoted to this personal study, and I have a vast library to back me up to do the work. I am constantly in preparation mode not because someone is pushing me, it is out of a devotion to these stories.

It is 100% focus whatever I am doing. Though, it’s probably the studio time that gets compromised more of time, just by the balance and needs of life

©Brenton Hamilton, Floating Rope_cyanotype on paper, 2024

STW: How did you develop your teaching philosophy?

BW: I didn’t have one at first. To fully grasp teaching in those early years was monumental. I was just trying to connect and keep my thoughts on track. You don’t get taught how to teach in graduate school. So, that did take several years and it’s a compilation of what I feel can propel a student forward and what you need to give, once you arrive there – and what I feel that I need to offer my students is an arena of freedom.

Sometimes that might be technical tools and understanding so that the student can break then, toward their aesthetics and concentrate on content. It’s a liberation, I think, and an important one. Other times, it is to look carefully and give the ideas shown to me their due, but acknowledging the authenticity of what the student is saying in their work is critical. In my experience across the table, when students get those things – then they flourish. They find energy from it. For me, my philosophy towards this complex process – continues to morph and grow. I gain a lot of special knowledge from watching work transform and I try to make concise statements that are on point to the matter at hand, and then I wait. I think this is necessary, teaching in this kind of environment.

©Brenton Hamilton, A Long Chain_cyanotype on paper, 2024

STW: How do you encourage imagination and creativity in your students? How do you teach students to think for themselves and find existential freedom in artmaking – find their voice?

BH: Well, I do a lot of quiet listening, but I keep track and try to find ways to prompt change. It is subtle – yet students work will move, it will leap forward and actually change and transform with this consistent attention. Sometimes they just need to know I am there in the background. When I’m teaching, everything is heightened. I feel highly engaged. I’m sharing an opinion, a methodology, and new possibilities I might see. I think it is a quietly intense process. I might wander around the lab space. I love the concept of shoulder to shoulder, if you will. I mean I want to be there. I might see what the potentials are before a student does, and so if I can figure out things to say, to assist the student to have multiple possible leaps. But of course, I must come up with things that’ll help a student move forward. There’s the physical stuff, tearing, prepping, soaking, brushing and I am present when the students are new to that. Sometimes, from across a room, I can tell by physical actions or sometimes sounds, when something isn’t going exactly as it should. I’m not overly obsessed with craft, but if it comes across that I am, it is because I want the methodology clarified, so that the student can concentrate on content. I think that someone can make a globby gum print, but it can be imbued with meaning and symbolism. Existential freedom means a lot to me, and I want to make that possible. When I’m in the role of mentor, it is when I encourage experimentation. I remind people that failure is inevitable and that there are lessons in it – and that is also tethered to risk. An artist really must cultivate risk. Failures are a particular kind of sounding board and can stop you in your tracks and give you a mirror for analysis.

©Brenton Hamilton, A Long Chain_cyanotype on paper, 2024

STW: Who were your most influential teachers?

BH: I have had several very meaningful mentors, fortunately very early on. As teachers there is still Craig Stevens, John Lawrence during my time in Georgia, and a devoted art teacher when I was very young, B.J. Radell who was a real supporter. The studio itself – so I mean the empty room. The studio is a private, experimental location, a mind space, an intellectual home, and that special space is the teacher. You know your materials and that psychic release, especially when it’s an established space. Artists really need these charged spaces.

©Brenton Hamilton, Cloud_Homage_cyanotype on paper, 2024

STW: If you were to be locked in a darkroom, what 4 artists in the 20th century would you like to keep you company? In the 19th century?

BH: In the 19th century, Hippolyte Bayard, his picture, that we all know so well of the drowned man, is so audacious and so interesting. That’s why he is on the list. Alphonse Eugene Hubert was an assistant to Daguerre, and he made extraordinary images himself. He was deeply knowledgeable. Hubert was right there at the foundation and inception of the medium, and it would be thrilling for me to talk with someone from that position. He would have such insight into the development of the French discovery. Henry Le Secq was a trained painter in the French Salon but is among the group of photographers who began to experiment with photography on paper and that is just one of my great personal passions, the paper Calotype. Joseph-Philibert Girault de Prangey was another daguerreotypist who went to the Middle East before anyone. He was a bold innovator with the materials, making daguerreotypes in impossible conditions. I’m making the point that somehow these 19th century figures, while a little bit obscure, are related to processes that I’m very, very interested in and their lives and stories compel me.

In the 20th century, Christian Shad resurrected the camera less image on a windowsill, using paper detritus and discovers new ways of transformation! Lazlo Maholy Nagy the great Hungarian experimenter, who often didn’t use a camera and perhaps saw light as a primary subject. What an inspiration! He was a huge influence on me. Eugene Atget and the way the work that he made appealed to the French Surrealists and their interest in the uncanny. Paul Caponigro, as an artist who gravitated toward the metaphysical with his masterful technique. A true philosopher.

©Brenton Hamilton, Cloud_Homage_cyanotype on paper, 2024

STW: Would you like to elaborate on how your art influences your teaching and vice versa?

BH: I think there is something key there and it is kind of simple. I’m very interested in the pursuit of a personal freedom, an existential freedom. If there is a connection between the two processes, meaning the art of teaching and the art of making art, the concept is present in both pursuits. I actually like to keep them separate, all in – sort of, all or nothing, but also, I like sharing my interest in a certain kind of freedom that I’m very interested in, and as a teacher I get to show my students this possibility. So, if that’s a philosophy that I’m interested in bringing to teaching, I could say that I try to illustrate it with the work I make.

©Brenton Hamilton, Collaged_Book_Plate_cyanotype on paper, 2024

STW: I once heard you say, paraphrasing Robert Adams: Autobiography, Geography, and Metaphor are foundational for art. How do you communicate this concept to your students?

BH: Thanks for remembering that special quoting of Adam’s beautiful phrase. I try to use that sparingly – but I do know that work being made is often caught up within those influences in any part of our lives. Our collected experiences, our location and land and sky and atmosphere, the very quality of light and how as a collective, they assemble a symbolic vocabulary that is often very specific. It is integral to the process. When someone’s making something, the influence of autobiography and terra firma and metaphor are bound to come up somehow. I might try as a constant to make sure students are aware this this.

©Brenton Hamilton, Cloud Homage, cyanotype on paper, 2024

STW: What keeps you teaching?

BH: I’ve had a few adventures. I was a diamond grader, a factory trained Mercedes tech specifier, but nothing has been as sustaining and rewarding as mentoring photographers and helping them fully realize their own work. I find it thrilling to connect and witness personal change.

STW: Are there any unique challenges in teaching that we haven’t yet touched on that you would like to share?

BH: This may not describe a challenge, but I know these things that I have seen during the long form process of participating in what I call ‘mentoring work’ for 33 years: It is a beautiful process – I get to be primarily an observer. Sometimes my comments and references lead somewhere. More often than not though, I get to see an individual find a creative river and it reorients their lives to important things – rare discoveries, and the juice of momentum to sustain this! The propulsion that can lead to finding oneself – all on their own. Often, I am the witness – the student is the engine.

Testimonials for Brenton

It was November 2020. As the world navigated the COVID pandemic, I found myself in my upstairs studio, cautiously brushing a mixture of platinum, palladium, and ferric oxalate while a calm voice coached me through a Zoom window. I had no idea what this print would look like, but I trusted my instructor as he patiently peered through my laptop’s webcam. Somehow, he judged the exposure as I attempted to show him my contact frame. “Three more minutes, Chris,” he said—off I went, rushing downstairs to find the perfect spot under the cloudy sky. I repeated this cycle three more times, up and down the stairs, with a smile. Finally, maintaining his patient demeanor, he said, “It’s ready.” I had set up a makeshift darkroom in my daughter’s bathroom and watched wide-eyed as I poured the developer over my print. The image appeared, and I let out a satisfied breath as I stared, wide-eyed, at my first platinum print. I was hooked. 

In my life, I’ve been blessed to meet the right mentors at the right time. Brenton Hamilton is indeed one of those. I had the honor of learning from him side by side at the Maine Media Workshops. Even luckier still, he agreed to mentor me during my time as an MFA candidate at Maine Media College. Working with Brenton was akin to throwing a rock into a still pond—the shift in mindset initiated a cyclical expansion that resonates to this day. Brenton never told me what I should do; instead, he doled out breadcrumbs of discovery at the precise moment I was ready to understand and absorb them. 

This same platinum print hangs in a prominent place in my studio. It’s always within eyesight as a reminder that creating personal and meaningful art goes beyond the technical and deeply into the personal and spiritual.  When confronted with obstacles in my artmaking, I hear a handful of voices silently telling me to push on despite all the failed experiments.  Brenton’s voice is one of those voices.

Chris Leventis, MFA
Adjunct Professor, Art and Design
University of Tampa
College of Arts and Letters

If you ask what the most significant influence Brenton has had on me and my artistic practice, I would have a difficult time deciding on which of three particular interactions has been the most influential. His role as an academic educator, his guidance as a teacher of historic process techniques, and the mentoring relationship he provided me have all been integral to my artistic development.

Over the last decade, I have repeatedly participated in Brenton’s History of Photography Classes.  Each time, I was exposed to his latest research and on-going enthusiasm.  From those classes I developed a sense of where my photographic practice existed on a temporal continuum and why that was important.

About ten years ago Brenton introduced me to the world of historically based photographic development techniques.  He was not just any teacher.  His capacity to explore and master traditional ways of making photographs was infectious. I discovered an area of photography that satisfied my innate nature to create tangible objects.  This component had been missing in my photographic practice until Brenton introduced me to the allure of multi-layered gum prints and the beauty of carbon transfer printing.

Over and above these two influences, the very most significant one of all comes from our mentoring interactions, sometimes in a group setting, and sometime one-on-one.  In both cases Brenton showed me how to both emotionally and visually analyse my work.   He taught me to see connections between images and how to discover alternatives.  It is this process more than any other that helped me reach beyond my underlying limitations.

Brenton is the kind of person that really does care about the people he encounters.  It is that commitment and his generosity that I will always hold dear.

Jeannie Hutchins
MFA Maine Media College
Camden, ME. 04843