benhider.com/blog

Knox Martin was my advisor George Parrino’s mentor at Yale.

In the middle of the most incredible month where I met and shot loads of really interesting people, I got to photograph the Stone Temple Pilots after a radio session at Sirius XM. Many moons ago, I was an angst ridden 16 year old, heading off to my first Rock and Roll concert alone to see them live at Brixton Academy. This month I also got to meet and photograph His Holiness the Dalai Lama, Jodie Foster, Cesar Millan, Hugh Laurie and also Damian Marley and Sean Lennon, the children of two of the best musicians the world has ever seen. Although this isn’t why I got my MFA, it’s turning into a pretty great way to make a living right now.

It’s been a busy 2 weeks which is why I’ve been ignoring my blog. Here is a snippet

I’ve hardly used the video feature of my Canon 5D Mark ii camera, I keep meaning on playing around with it but haven’t had anything that I want to make a video of yet. I can’t wait to see the season finale of House shot entirely with a 5D Mark ii.

We finally got to MOMA to see the Marina Abramovic show, and I was quite pleasantly surprised. I’d normally say that I don’t enjoy performance art very much, and have rarely maintained interest at museum retrospectives of performance artists. The mix of video, photo and live performance makes the show easily accessible and pretty enjoyable.

In the main hall there is Abromovic sitting in a chair opposite a member of the general public. Apparently some people end up in tears - marinaabramovicmademecry.tumblr.com. In the main exhibit, I was surprised by how powerful it was walking through a doorway with naked strangers either side. Although the space is wider than the original performance and the nude models were more like models than the general public, it was still uncomfortable squeezing through two completely naked bodies.