Heather Benton maintains a deep and profound love for the picturesque, agricultural nature of the Southeast. Her childhood offered her a great deal of travel, living in Murphreesboro, Virginia Beach, Chapel Hill, as well as more recently, Statesboro. She began her career in photography at the age of 15 while living in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Almost immediately, she began to show a preference toward photojournalism and documentary style work. Within two years, at the age of 17, she began to teach introduction classes to grade school children through the Durham Arts Council, which led to her introduction to her early mentors, John Cowan and York Wilson. Through the connections made at the council, Heather began working on projects for the Duke University Documentary Center, on location in Mexico, covering the Mayan ruins of the Yucatan peninsula, and later to New York City for a personal documentary on street life.

Heather’s appreciation for agricultural imagery originates from her lifelong fascination with gardening and exotic flowers. From her early childhood, she was introduced to many different forms of agricultural methods and gardening for both sustenance as well as pleasure. This manifests her preference for natural settings wherever possible in both her artistic expression as well as her professional photography. Where photography is her truest passion, cultivation of plant life runs a very close second.

Being mentored by photographic purists, Heather’s primary focus is to always allow the image to speak for itself, crediting herself only with “documenting the inherent beauty of the event or subject.” Heather currently works in and around the Statesboro area, always with camera in hand, seeking out moments of impact.