Benjamin Battersby – Biography I was born in London in 1972 and grew up surrounded by storytelling—even if I didn’t always realise it. As a kid, I was fascinated by light, by faces, by the feeling that meaning was hiding in plain sight. Art wasn’t formal—it was found in sunlight through dusty windows or the strange beauty of a rainy afternoon. I stumbled into photography as a teenager and quickly fell under its spell. The first time I saw an image appear in a chemical bath in the school darkroom, I thought: this is magic. In the early 1990s, I studied A Level Art and completed a photography course in London. But soon I was off—travelling through Latin America with a Nikon f3 and a backpack full of film, trying to photograph what I felt as much as what I saw. In 1994, I entered the film industry, where I would spend nearly three decades working as a cinematographer and Director of Photography. I started at the bottom and learned fast—loading film, pulling focus, watching great directors and DOPs in action. It was an intense and often thrilling apprenticeship in the language of cinema. Later, I found myself leading my own crews, shaping stories with light. Commercials, documentaries, narrative films—I shot them all, both in the UK and, from 2009 onwards, in Argentina. Physically grueling but I loved the craft, the collaboration, the rhythm of a set. But there was little space for personal expression. That came later, and not by choice. In 2021, I was diagnosed with stage IV cancer. Everything changed. The diagnosis came post-pandemic, a punch to the solar plexus, I was down but not out. Treatment began. Surgeries followed. My world shrank and then reassembled, slowly, painfully, grew into something new. I picked up the camera again in 2024, not as a professional, but as a man trying to understand what was happening to him. That’s how BREATHE began. At night, when fear or pain kept me awake, I started to make images. Quiet, intimate, searching. I photographed myself—my body, my surroundings, the silence, the light. Using minimum equipment, shot on my own, without the gaze of others, I was able to reveal myself, to record myself, both physically, emotionally and spiritually. The images came from necessity, not ambition. But they started to say something I hadn’t heard before. My years as a DOP gave me the tools: I understood light, space, texture, atmosphere. But this time there was no script. Just me, present and vulnerable, using photography as a way to survive and understand. BREATHE is a meditation on what it means to live with chronic illness. It’s about fear, anxiety, strength, absurdity, and the stubbornness of beauty. It's about being knocked down & it's about getting back up again. It’s deeply personal but not insular. Strangers have written to me in response to these images. People have cried when they’ve seen them. There’s a shared language in vulnerability, and I’m always moved when someone recognises something of themselves in this work. The project was preselected for the Salón Nacional de Artes Visuales in Buenos Aires and named Photo of the Week by the BBA Photography Prize. But more than accolades, it’s the personal responses that matter. The messages from people navigating illness, loss, or change who say: this speaks to me. I live now in Buenos Aires with my wife and children. They are my centre. BREATHE, as well as the work that I hope will follow, is my way of staying close to life, of honouring what I’ve been through and steadying myself for what's to come. I believe in photography not as spectacle, but as intimacy. As truth. As generosity. —Benjamin Battersby