ABOUT BENJAMIN HARGREAVES
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A Chartered Accountant turned Art Dealer who at 18 had discovered there were more and more interesting books at home on Buddhism than on Christianity, and who bought his first classic car in 1973...
After Oxford University I spent the next two decades mostly in London working as a chartered accountant for a major firm of auditors. This, ironically, included a year working in Detroit, USA, 'motor city'. In these years I spent an inordinate amount of time looking at pictures, both the greatest paintings in the great museums, and the smallest drawings with small scale art dealers.
In due course I changed direction completely to deal in pictures as an independent art dealer, at first primarily in late 18th and early 19th century drawings and watercolours. Increasingly I encountered work by contemporary artists (not just on paper) that struck a chord, and gradually moved into this field. Over three decades I have mounted some 55 exhibitions and showed at more than 60 art fairs.
Joining an Anglo-Australian artists' expedition in outback Australia in 2000 encouraged me to take my own photography more seriously, especially after inclusion in the subsequent exhibition of work from that trip organised at Bankside Gallery, London, in 2001. I was also invited to join a further artists' working expedition in Australia in 2004.
My photographs are things seen rather more than things created: what interests me in part is the sense of 'look at this', being present to what is around us, and the way what we see can have associations, resonance, with other aspects of life, and how images can sometimes represent a quintessence of something.
My first book Cars in the Landscape was undoubtedly influenced by being brought up with interesting cars coming and going (and sometimes failing to go), with a father who was a motoring enthusiast. In 1973 I bought my first classic car six months before the first issue of the new magazine 'Thoroughbred & Classic Cars' (as it was then called) came out.
On A Road, On A Journey focuses on the idea of the journey, and considers in addition the spiritual resonance inherent in the theme. The importance of roads and journeys in mythology, poetry, song and literature is explored, and how these ideas have become important symbols in the way we think. Readers can feast their eyes on landscapes which may inspire travel, or they may be prompted to think about inner journeys.
Overall enthusiasms: visual imagery; the inner beyond the physical (metaphysics).
Favourite past artists: Rembrandt; Rubens landscapes; Claude Lorrain; Caspar David Friedrich; Kathe Kollwitz.
Favourite current artists: those that I have shown.
Best holidays: trekking in the Markha Valley, Ladakh, India; cycling journeys in Europe; driving in France (preferably in an open car).
Favourite places: Carmel, California; Wigmore Hall, London; Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney; Prescott Hill Climb; the Lake District; mountains.
Particular heroes: Eugene Delacroix; Edward Weston; Hector Berlioz; Gustav Mahler; Dame Janet Baker.
Preferred photographers: Edward Weston; Kertesz; Ansel Adams; Louis Klementaski.
Particular dislikes: opera directors more interested in their own ideas than the composer's ('If you don't believe in it, don't do it.') ; excesses of conceptualism.
Favourite poets: Wordsworth; Janet Lewis (20th Century American); Wang Wei (8th Century Chinese); Rupert Brooke.
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