Niall Benvie: Meet Your Neighbours – Exhibition Program
How often does a Scotsman living in the south of France visit western New York?
Niall Benvie, an exceptional environmental photographer and co-founder of the Meet Your Neighbours project, will be joining us via Zoom on Saturday, January 31, at 12 pm (a 40-minute presentation followed by 10 minutes for questions/comments). Seating and a viewing screen will be set up in the Green Gallery, and the public may speak with Benvie in real time during the presentation. Viewers may also engage with the Zoom at home. Light refreshments will be available in the RTPI lobby.
Benvie’s program will focus on his Environmental Impact Award-winning project now on display at RTPI, Meet Your Neighbours: how the project got its start, and an astonishing survey of images from the project that expands on the photographs displayed in the museum. Meet Your Neighbours uses portraiture photography intended to take the viewer’s breath away. Each subject is photographed in the field, against a white background brought onto the scene. This technique not only shows the subject in great detail, but reveals their translucent qualities too. Each subject becomes a celebrity, an individual.
Founded in 2009, Meet Your Neighbours is a worldwide photographic initiative created by Niall Benvie and Clay Bolt. The project reconnects people with the wildlife on their own doorsteps. These creatures and plants are vital: they represent the first, and for some, the only contact with wild nature we have. Yet too often they are overlooked, undervalued. This is conservation photography at the grass-roots level, asking people to care about where they live and showing them how extraordinary it is in a novel way.
Niall Benvie grew up in eastern Scotland, where his parents were berry farmers. His first love has always been the natural world – and image making. Benvie has been at the center of several of the largest outdoor photography initiatives of the last 15 years, including Wild Wonders of Europe, Meet Your Neighbours, and 2020VISION. He was a Founding Fellow of the International League of Conservation Photographers and has published seven books and hundreds of articles. He now lives in the Morvan in central France with his wife Charlotte, with whom he runs Food and Photography Retreats Ltd and claims hoopoes and turtle doves, nightingales and golden oriole as his neighbors.
IMAGE CAPTION: Niall Benvie. Roadside Community, Nièvre, France, with Sunflowers Escaped from Cultivation. Photo composite, 2015-2025. © Niall Benvie