Ben Altman

  • Introduction
  • About/Contact
  • NEW
    • I Own This Stolen Land
  • INTRACTABLE HISTORIES
    • The More That Is Taken Away
    • Site/Sight
    • Seeing Memorials
    • Guantanámo Basement
    • Which Side Are You On
  • INVISIBLE HISTORIES
    • The Empty Centre
    • An Expatriate's Views
  • PLACE AND TIME
    • Memory Mechanism
    • Portraits/Interviews

My family and friends are scattered over several continents and multiple marriages. People gather from their disparate lives for weddings, funerals and parties. I photograph these rites of passage, and smaller occasions. 

The photographs replace snapshots with something flawed, layered and  less resolved. The pieces depict a fairly privileged life within which family, friends, and connections are nevertheless evanescent. They are, in a way, memorials.


Nephew's Moving Away Party, Wiltshire, UK

The images are composites, false panoramas created by incomplete frame advances and accidental double exposures. The individual exposures are made rather casually. The overlaps and sequencing are mostly unplanned and unforeseeable, juxtaposing incidents, conversations, and scenes that occurred at different times and sometimes in different spaces.

A Sixtieth Birthday Party on a Schooner, Bristol Docks, UK

I use toy cameras, medium-format Holgas, with plastic or vintage lenses. Each frame falls away at the edges, so the overlap of one frame on the next blends across the join. I pick out a contiguous section of a strip of film to print with either Platinum/Palladium or Gold-toned Van Dyke processes. I use these hand-coated methods for their soft-toned rendering and permanence, appropriate to memorials but not to memories.

A Seventieth Birthday Party, Woodstock, NY, USA

Al Fresco Dinner with Friends, Bay of Islands, New Zealand

Copyright 2021 Ben Altman, All Rights Reserved

Al Fresco Dinner with Friends, Devon, UK

Copyright 2021 Ben Altman, All Rights Reserved

Dinner with Aunt, Cousin, and Family, Tel Aviv, Israel

Copyright 2021 Ben Altman, All Rights Reserved

Afternoon at Friends' Cottage, Birch Lake, Ontario, Canada

Copyright 2021 Ben Altman, All Rights Reserved

My Son's Graduation, Philadelphia, USA

Copyright 2021 Ben Altman, All Rights Reserved

Wedding, Mayor's Office, Ithaca, NY, USA

Copyright 2021 Ben Altman, All Rights Reserved

Wedding Reception, Manhattan, NY, USA

Copyright 2021 Ben Altman, All Rights Reserved

Wedding Reception, Manhattan, NY, USA

Copyright 2021 Ben Altman, All Rights Reserved

Stepson's Wedding, Oakland, CA, USA

Copyright 2021 Ben Altman, All Rights Reserved

Stepson's Wedding, Oakland, CA, USA

Copyright 2021 Ben Altman, All Rights Reserved

Friends' Wedding, Ithaca, NY, USA

Copyright 2021 Ben Altman, All Rights Reserved

Nephew's Wedding, Hampshire, UK

Copyright 2021 Ben Altman, All Rights Reserved

My Son's Wedding, Ann Arbor, MI, USA

Copyright 2021 Ben Altman, All Rights Reserved

Family Lunch, The Day After My Son's Wedding, Crooked Lake, MI, USA

Copyright 2021 Ben Altman, All Rights Reserved

Funeral Reception, Manhattan, NY, USA

Copyright 2021 Ben Altman, All Rights Reserved

Memorial Celebration, Devon, UK

Copyright 2021 Ben Altman, All Rights Reserved

My Wife and her Cousin Cleaning Family Gravestones, Upstate NY, USA

Copyright 2021 Ben Altman, All Rights Reserved

What I Have Permission to Say, Ithaca, NY, USA