Roloff Beny, OC (January 7, 1924 – March 16, 1984) was a Canadian photographer who spent the better part of his life in Rome and on his photographic travels throughout the world. Born Wilfred Roy Beny in Medicine Hat, Alberta, he later took as his first name Roloff, his mother's maiden name.

Canada, as Beny remarked, had "no temples two thousand years old, no paths worn hard by passionate travelers." [1] But the photographer soon found his way to those paths and temples in the course of "insatiable wanderings in Europe and Asia," and, above all, around the long, richly-indented perimeter of the Mediterranean. [1]

Roloff Beny, as he called himself, was a man obsessed with the beauty of the world. He has most justly been called "a poetic photographer". [1] and he was a passionate aesthete whose eye transfigured everything he saw. His photographic journeys were recorded in a series of splendid large-scale volumes which appeared over the years. His visual journey led from his hometown of Medicine Hat, Alberta, in the shadow of the Canadian Rockies, to a penthouse overlooking the Tiber in Rome, which was his base for more than 30 years.

His books won awards throughout a long career, beginning with The Thrones of Earth and Heaven in 1958. To Every Thing There is a Season: Roloff Beny in Canada is a study of his native land.

In 1972, he was made an Officer of the Order of Canada.

Beny was, in early days, a protege of Peggy Guggenheim and Herbert Read. The circle of friends around him - actors, artists, collectors, writers - included such figures as Laurence Olivier, Stephen Spender, Rose Macauly, Bernhard Berenson, Jean Cocteau, Henry Moore, and other luminaries of art and literature.

His readers, like his travels, are international, and his books have been published in America, Canada, England, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, Yugoslavia, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Iran, and Japan.

Roloff Beny died in 1984, age only 60, in his Roman studio overlooking the Tiber. His last four volumes appeared posthumously.

Beny's work is in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the National Gallery of Canada, and the Yale University Art Gallery.

"I see majestic ruins even in the architecture of the skies," he wrote in the Preface to one of his splendid and marvelous books. [2]

[edit] Roloff Beny's Books

• The Thrones of Earth and Heaven, 1958
• A Time of Gods, 1962
• Pleasure of Ruins, 1964
• To Every Thing There is a Season, Roloff Beny in Canada, 1967
• Japan in Color, 1967
• India, 1969
• Island Ceylon, 1970
• Rajasthan, Land of Kings, 1974
• Roloff Beny in Italy, 1974
• Persia, Bridge of Turquoise, 1975
• Iran, Elements of Destiny, 1978
• The Churches of Rome, 1981
• Odyssey: Mirror on the Mediterranean, 1981
• The Gods of Greece, 1983
• The Romance of Architecture, 1985 (posthumous)
• Iceland, 1985 (posthumous)
• Visual Journeys, 1994 (posthumous)
• People, Legends in Life and Art, 1995 (posthumous)

[edit] Sources

• [1] Roloff Beny, To Every Thing there is a Season, The Viking Press, New York, 1967.
• [2] Roloff Beny, Pleasure of Ruins,Thames and Hudson, London, 1964

[edit] External links

• Library and Archives Canada: Legends in Life and Art: The Portrait Photography of Roloff Beny
• Roloff Beny, Lethbridge College Buchanan Art Collection

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