Visual Poetics

In the Fall 21 issue of the Kehrer catalogue, New Zealander Harvey Benge is featured for his recent work in All the Places I’ve Ever Known. Kehrer, based in Heidelberg and Berlin, specialises in publishing fine art photography and recognises Benge’s work for his creativity, humour and irony. Based in both Auckland and Paris, Harvey Benge aims to investigate the relationship between parallel lives and thus his photography reveals the strange and absurd nature of everyday life. His photos then are at the same time ambiguous, incongruous, poetic and dreamlike. Harvey Benge is held worldwide in public and private collections. His newest body of work in All the Places continues to explore the concept of perception and the nature of seeing in its visual endeavors, a theme that is emphasised by the book’s opening quotation by the ancient Buddhist Master Longchenpa: “Since everything is but an apparition, perfect in being what it is, having nothing to do with good or bad, acceptance and rejection, you might as well burst out laughing.”