Authors: Ben Ruhe
Date Submitted: May 31, 2007
Article Type: Discourse

No telling how many people have been inspired by “Cris” Benton’s killer Web site to take up kite aerial photography, but it must be quite a few. A professor of architecture at the University of California at Berkeley, the energetic Benton says he’s notorious for being fickle with his interests “but KAP has stuck.” Benton adds, “With KAP, you can see details of the landscape you just can’t get when you’re standing on the ground.” His photographs leave him yearning to discover uses and connections between parts of the landscape. “You can’t take the photos without them raising questions,” he says. “I call it interrogating the landscape.” Benton doesn’t use a monitor to view the images prior to shooting them. “I prefer to imagine what it would be like if I were up there,” he says. “I learn a lot that way.”

Page Number: 16
PDF Link: Discourse Issue