Today, we’d like to introduce you to Benjamin Cohen.
Hi Benjamin, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
Hello! My name is Ben Cohen and I’m a 22 year old photographer based in Salt Lake City. I mostly do fine arts photography. I don’t do much “professional” photography like real estate or wedding photography. I have dabbled in weddings and real estate photography, but I like to do what I want to do so I stick with fine arts or contemporary photography. I also do live music photography. I started doing photography in middle school on my iPod Touch 4th Gen. When I got to high school, I signed up for the photography class and got into doing studio photography. My high school in Pullman, WA, has a really nice studio and lights, so I would take photos of students. While doing that, I would also explore my town and do street photography. The pandemic hit, and I moved to Utah, and it was like a mental reset for me.
I forgot who I was and my interests, then I got crappy jobs, then decided to go to school at SLCC, and I studied film there. While using the cameras at SLCC, I remembered that I love using cameras and got back into photography. I changed my major from film to Gen Ed so I could leave with a degree that I could use to transfer to a 4-year school if I want to in the future. During my time at SLCC I’ve helped with a handful of student films, and I learned how to develop film and scan and edit them. I love film. It has a different aesthetic to digital.
Digital is still fun because it’s getting to the point where there are no limits to the sensors. You can use however high ISO you want because the noise has its own aesthetic, which I like. These past eight months, I’ve shot a few Kilby shows, a lot of landscapes, and some streets. I have a vibrant style to my work. I like to make my photos look like eye candy.
I appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
I’m not trying to get the best quality out of my work, I’m trying to appeal to an aesthetic that fits my current feelings or interests. My photos have personality, they have grain and stains and dust, because my brain is full of stains and dust. I’m not a pixel peeker. I don’t look at every pixel of my photos and make sure it’s the exact color I want it to be, and I don’t do crazy photoshop edits to make my photos look unrealistically beautiful.
I like over the top colors and dramatic scenery and interesting subject matters. I like to do black and white and color, and sometimes I do trichromatic photography. I’m very spontaneous with my locations. I’ll look at Google earth on my phone and try to find things that interest me then I’ll go take photos there. Photography isn’t hard for me, it’s almost effortless. I’m very comfortable with using cameras and it’s easy for me to compose a shot that I like.
What were you like growing up?
In elementary school, I wanted to have all the attention on me but when I got the attention, I would get shy and think “Uhhh everyone is looking at me”. Middle school I got into video games and Minecraft, and I liked being up to date with the latest smartphone and technology, which got me interested in cameras.
In middle school, I had a friend group, but I would only stick to that group; I didn’t know how to interact with other people my age. This made me shy, and I wouldn’t talk much. The town I grew up in only had one middle school and one high school, so all of us knew not to bully each other too much, and if you did bully someone, people would get upset because it’s like a community. I still got bullied because I was short and skinny and I was geeky and mildly flamboyant. I’m still all of those things so the bully’s didn’t win. Going into high school I was still shy, but I had some confidence.
Freshman year some gurls joined my friend group and they didn’t like me, so all the friends from that group stopped talking to me. I had other friends, so I would go around to all those groups and talk to them, but I wasn’t a part of any friend group. In my sophomore year, I took photography, and I learned all the basics to photography pretty quickly. A way that I would make friends was by inviting them into the school’s studio and talking to them while I was taking their portraits, and I would play around with lights and color gels to see what colors looked best on different tones of skin. I also would do light painting. That was my sophomore and junior years of high school.
When I was a senior, I didn’t care about school. I would always finish tests and assignments really fast and then sit in class bored. I was really smart in school. I never studied, and I passed with a 3.5 GPA. My school was one of the top schools in Washington. Me and my friends would get good grades and then skip class and go get high.
Covid happened while I was a senior in Pullman, then my dad got a new job, and I had no choice but to leave Washington and come to Utah for his new work. This broke my brain; I had no idea what was going on.
I actually thought I was dreaming when we were driving down to Utah, it was so sudden for me, but my parents have been planning it for a bit without telling me. I graduated high school without doing anything. I didn’t do any homework or tests and I don’t think my teachers assigned any. I just got my degree. During the pandemic I was incredibly depressed, I didn’t have any friends because I didn’t have any setting to make friends. All I would do was work, then go home and watch YouTube. It felt like an infinite loop.
It got to a point where I knew something needed to change even though I was so unmotivated. I was tired of working awful jobs. I quit my job at Texas Roadhouse and started going to SLCC and I’ve made some friends there and I’m still meeting new people.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/cohen.benj/
