Neil Benson, prolific photographer, recycling pioneer, salvage artist, and community activist, has died at 69

Neil Benson, 69, of Philadelphia, a prolific photographer who snapped iconic images of Philadelphia and its people for three decades, pioneer of the recycling movement, salvage artist, street actor, and community activist, died Wednesday, Jan. 18, of multiple organ failure at Penn Presbyterian Medical Center.

Mr. Benson, a staff photographer at Philadelphia Magazine from 1975 to 1990, also sold countless pictures from 1970 until his retirement in 2000 to The Inquirer, Daily News, United Press International, New York Times, Rolling Stone, People, Life, Time, and other publications. His specialty was variety, and his photos of Mayor Frank Rizzo with Queen Elizabeth II, Phillies star Mike Schmidt stretched out on the locker-room floor, and everyday Philadelphians just doing their thing made him a go-to photographer during some of the era’s biggest stories.

He covered the Three Mile Island nuclear accident in 1979, the Ira Einhorn murder case in 1981, the bombing of the MOVE house in 1985, and numerous Miss America pageants. He also took pictures of Philadelphians washing their front stoops and children playing baseball in the street, and he collaborated with writer Alex Goldblum to publish Neil Benson: Philadelphia Photographer in 2017.

“His work demonstrated the power of photojournalism to record urban life and capture the city during a time of sweeping change and tumult,” officials at the Philadelphia History Museum at the Atwater Kent said in 2016 when it featured an exhibit of Mr. Benson’s work called “Made in Philadelphia: Movers and Shakers.”

Longtime friend and neighbor Michael Tearson said Mr. Benson was a “great photographer whose sharp wit often came out in his pictures.”

Mr. Benson lived in Center City and Powelton Village, and many of his neighbors knew him as the Mayor of Mole Street and longtime board member of the Logan Square Neighborhood Association. He got involved in many civic activities, created lively street-theater shows, and served as block captain and town watch member.

He championed recycling efforts long before they were common and was a popular lecturer at schools, museums, art centers, and elsewhere about the environment and waste disposal. A lifelong collector, Mr. Benson cofounded Philadelphia Dumpster Divers in 1992 and spent the next 30 years turning the castoffs of others into what he and his fellow divers call their “art supplies.”

“It’s a sin to waste,” Mr. Benson told The Inquirer in 1993. “That’s the underlying theory of dumpster divers. It’s against natural law to landfill usable items.” His motto was “Trash is simply a failure of imagination.”

Using his artistic dexterity and keen eye, Mr. Benson fashioned jewelry from discarded typewriter parts and picture frames from tin cans, and covered old furniture and suitcases with discarded license plates and street signs. “It was all about giving new life to the things we put in the trash stream,” said his sister Ellen.

Over the years, Mr. Benson collected beat-up aluminum cookware, neon signs, Hawaiian shirts, rotary telephones, old answering machines, padlocks, cigar boxes, record players, political buttons, Boy Scout patches, metal lunch boxes, abandoned cars, and much more that he kept, sold, or recycled into artwork that he and the divers display for viewing and sale at local exhibitions.

» READ MORE: Dumpster-diving Philadelphia artist Neil Benson lets go with a little help from friends

“This is the most disposable society the world has ever seen,” Mr. Benson said. “This country throws out more than any other country makes.”

By 2011, Mr. Benson’s Center City home was so full that his family and friends staged a friendly and welcomed clear-out intervention. “I’m in a position where I don’t have stuff anymore,” he told The Inquirer. “Stuff has me.”

Born March 9, 1953, in Philadelphia, Neil Samuel Benson grew up in Logan, collected stamps as a boy, and graduated from Olney High School. He attended Philadelphia College of Art, now University of the Arts, for a while and later honed his photographic skills at Temple University.

He liked cheesesteaks and hoagies, shopped at thrift stores, and loved to tell old stories and bad jokes. He could be passionately argumentative, friends said, but his good intentions and big heart usually smoothed over any ruffled feathers.

“Nobody else did what he did in so many ways,” Tearson said. “He was one of the quirkiest and most wonderful people I ever knew.” In a tribute, his sisters said: “He was difficult to live with and impossible to live without.”

“He was a free spirit,” his sister Ellen said. His sister Sally Alsher said: “He lived life on his own terms, and that was important to him.”

A friend wrote on the Dumpster Divers Facebook page: “He was and is a large-souled person, one impossible to ignore. And he was ours!”

In addition to his sisters, Mr. Benson is survived by other relatives.

He donated his body to medical science.

A celebration of his life is to be held later.