Shannon Benine is a North American artist, curator and educator known for her dedication to advancing the discourse on expanded documentary photography, interdisciplinary approaches to art and community engagement. Benine constantly asks the question, what mechanisms are there to support marginalized communities from the decisions of hegemonic systems of power? Her work examines the aesthetics, politics and ethics of past and present documentary techniques while it engages the viewer in a discussion and debate about the United States’ politically charged history of human rights. Drawing from years of intensive artistic research, Benine combines photography, video, sound, text and archival materials to create multimedia installations that reimagine existing methodologies within the broad scope of documentary practices. She holds an MFA in Photography from the University of Illinois at Chicago and a BFA in Photography and BA in Interdisciplinary Visual Arts from the University of Washington in Seattle.
