Center for Creative Photography Gifted Benn Mitchell’s Archive

The widow of Benn Mitchell, a photographer who sold his first picture to Life magazine at the age of 16 and went on to shoot in locations including New York and Hollywood in the 1940s and ’50s, gifted his archive as well as $1 million to the Center for Creative Photography at Arizona University. The funding is designated for the Center’s collection, which includes some 110,000 works by more than 2,200 photographers.  

In a statement announcing the gift, Esther Mitchell said, “When I started looking for the right home for Benn’s work, I learned about the Center for Creative Photography and the strong reputation they have for preserving archives. They don’t just store photographs. They study them, teach with them and share them with the public. That combination really made me feel it was the right place.”

Benn Mitchell started shooting pictures at 16 and, a year later, moved from New York to Los Angeles, where he photographed movie stars including Humphrey Bogart and Gene Autry. In the ‘50s he started a commercial studio in New York, where he continued shooting all manner of cultural life while also working in advertising and stock photography. He died in 2021 in Boca Raton, Florida, where a survey of his work was presented at the Boca Raton Museum of Art in 2023.

Below, see a selection of highlights of photographs by Benn Mitchell in the collection of the Center for Creative Photography.