Benjamen Chinn, Balconies, Rue de Tocqueville, Paris, 1949. Vintage gelatin silver print, 12" x 10.5". Flush-mounted. Signed in pencil on verso. Title and date in pencil on verso. "Perceptions" exhibition sticker with number in pencil on verso. Matted.

Exhibited: "Perceptions: Bay Area Photography 1945-1960," Los Angeles Valley College, 2006.

Artist Biography: Benjamen Chinn has lived much of his life in the same Chinatown neighborhood in which he was born. As a 10 - year old child, he was taught the fundamentals of photography by an older brother. With the outbreak of World War II, he joined the Army Air Corps, serving as an aerial, ground, and public relations photographer. Afterward, he studied photography and painting at the CSFA and in Paris. He served on the West Coast review committee for The Family of Man. Chinn pursued a 30-year professional career with the Department of Defense, first as Chief of Photographic Services, then as Chief of the Training Aids Division for the U.S. Sixth Army. Paul Caponigro has said of Chinn: “He demonstrated to me by his own actions in life that the most important technique for good art should be a quiet depth and manifestation of feeling from the heart.”

Education: California School of Fine Arts, 1946–1949. L’Académie Julian and University of Paris, 1949–1950 .

Selected Exhibitions: Perceptions, San Francisco Museum of Art, August–September 1954. Mt. Angel College, Mt. Angel, Oregon, 1964. DeAnza College, Cupertino, CA, 1965. Alumni Exhibitions, San Francisco Art Institute, The Focus Gallery, San Francisco, January 1981. San Francisco Art Institute: 50 Years of Photography, Transamerica Pyramid Lobby, San Francisco, October–November 1998. Benjamen Chinn at Home in San Francisco, Chinese Historical Society of America, San Francisco, January–May 2003.

Selected Collections: The Hallmark Photographic Collection, Kansas City, MO.

Selected Publications: Aperture 1:2, 1952, front cover. Keith F. Davis, An American Century of Photography From Dry-Plate to Digital: The Hallmark Photographic Collection, 2nd Edition, 1999, p. 274. Irene Poon, Leading the Way: Asian American Artist of the Older Generation, 2001. Irene Poon, Dennis Reed and Paul Caponigro, Benjamen Chinn at Home in San Francisco, 2003. (source: Paul Hertzmann)

Good condition, minor wear at edges visible in photo

12 x 10.5 in