Bank of the Arts Current Exhibit
“ALL IN ONE RIVER” - PHOTOGRAPHY BY BEN CASEY
At the Bank of the Arts through February 25 Growing up in New Bern and Pamlico County, photojournalist Ben Casey enjoyed the activities afforded by the surrounding coastal waters, including the Neuse and Trent Rivers and Dawson Creek. But his love of learning led him to teach. With degrees in math education from Atlantic Christian College and Duke University, Casey enjoyed a brief career in education before pursuing what became his real love, photography and journalism. Unable to resist the lure of coastal waterways any longer, Ben sold his photography studio in Nashville, NC, and moved to his idea of paradise - Pamlico County, the Neuse River and Dawson Creek - to pursue a career in writing. In 2002, Ben Casey became more intimately acquainted with the Neuse River and its dynamic ecosystem in a photographic journey that began in a canoe at the headwaters at Falls Dam and culminated 240 enthralling miles later in his book All in One River: Falls Dam to Pamlico Sound, Interviewing the Neuse River. Since its release, Casey has spoken frequently to community, civic and conservation groups about his experiences and what he learned on his journey down the Neuse River. In the spring and summer of 2004, Casey’s love of learning and photography combined with his passion for coastal waterways and their intricate relationships with humans to inspire him to embark on a somewhat shorter, but no less amazing and beautiful, journey down the Trent River. He paddled and photographed the scenery from its origins in Lenoir County to its mouth at New Bern, where it joins the Neuse. The result of this spiritual journey is his book, Living Waters: The Trent River, Wellspring for Jones County, NC. His most recent book is Dismal? The Great Dismal Swamp Canal, which was completed in 2008. Though Casey describes the transition from film to digital as traumatic, because he was forever trying to hone skills with the large-format view camera, he doesn’t look back. He now compares the computer to the darkroom, simply using Photoshop to enhance images the same way he would have in the wet darkroom. However, he does not embrace the computer and Photoshop to transform an image into something other than a photograph. His efforts with a digital camera and Photoshop are to create images in the same style he would have when he was using film. The artists states, “I hope people will look at the things that have caught my eye and feel something, have some kind of reaction. I admire the philosophy of the great Henri Cartier Bresson, who admonished photographers to seek the captured image as opposed to the created image. I love to capture – I used to say capture on film – those images that I find interesting, that speak either to the human condition or to the marvels of the planet earth.” Casey currently serves as Director of Community Relations and Public Information Officer for Pamlico Community College. He and his wife, Carolyn, live in Minnesott Beach - walking distance to Ben’s beloved Neuse River. |
