more bad news: RIP my uncle, John Benton-Harris

My year of hell, which I thought was behind me, continues: My uncle, photographer John Benton-Harris, died on August 26th, less than a year after my mother’s death. (He was my mom’s brother.) I was quite close to him, and lived with him and his wife for the first year after I came to London. He was an incredible creative spirit, and very supportive of my work — we had long, raging conversations about the state of art, culture, society, and the world at large. He’d been a steadfast part of my life in London, a bit of a home base and safety net for this precarious writer, and I’m already missing him terribly.

A little under two years ago, I mentioned a project we were working on; that never quite gelled, and the fault was entirely my own. I was going to juxtapose some of his amazing photos from the Troubles in Northern Ireland, which he captured while on assignment for Newsweek, with my review of Belfast… except I never got around to reviewing that film. But I do have the photos he chose for the project, so it’s not entirely impossible that I might still make this happen.

Mostly, though, at the moment, my thoughts are with his wife, children, and grandchildren, and how diminished we will all be without his presence.