Michael Benson

Michael Benson, a photographer, writer and filmmaker, is widely recognized for bringing the visual legacy of space exploration to public view in photography exhibitions and books. Beyond: Visions of the Interplanetary Probes (2003), his internationally best-selling book of photographs derived from digital data collected by space agencies, was developed into an exhibition by the Smithsonian Institution and was presented at WAM in 2009. Additional publications include Far Out: A Space-Time Chronicle (2009) and Planetfall: New Solar System Visions (2012). Apart from his own award-winning films, Benson has worked with director Terence Malick to help realize space sequences in the film Tree of Life, which won the Palm d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival in 2011, and his work has also appeared in Chilean filmmaker Patricio Guzmán’s 2011 feature documentary Nostalgia for the Light. He currently lives in West Somerville, and is working at MIT on a project titled Nanocosmos.