Benedict Brain

Our regular columnist has just published his first book about photography – but it isn’t a ‘how-to’ technique manual, as Niall Hampton discovers

- Niall Hampton

This month’s interviewee needs little introduction, as he has penned ‘The Art of Seeing’ column in Digital Camera since 2019 (see page 39). In fact, Brain’s columns have inspired his first book, You Will Be Able to Take Great Photos By the End of this Book, which goes on sale this month. So let’s find out more about the book, and what it contains, from the man himself…

What first attracted you to the medium of photography?

I was always interested in art as a child. I chanced upon photography when an inspiring teacher gave me The Puffin Book of Photography as a prize for making a model of a Saxon village – I used real wattle and daub and think that clinched it for me. The teacher, Ed Collacott, was a keen photographer and in fact went on the become a full-time landscape photographer himself. I was about 10 at the time and the book inspired me to make a darkroom at home with some old equipment I cobbled together. The rest is history, and Ed and I are still friends today.

Which photographers inspired you when you were starting out? 

I remember seeing a Bill Brandt exhibition in my early teens, which was inspiring. It opened my eyes to the possibility that photography was an art. Later, on my art foundation course in Bristol, I discovered the work of photographers such as Ralph Eugene Meatyard, Duane Michals and Robert Adams and I was also introduced to the work of John Blakemore. Blakemore was also a teacher at the Derby School of Art and this played a large role my in wanting to study photography there, which I did. Blakemore, Olivier Richon and the other lecturers at Derby made lasting impressions on me. Looking back, it was an invaluable education.