The Story of Photographer Harry Benson and RFK

RFK at Podium by Harry Benson 1968

By ANTHONY HADEN-GUEST December 22st, 2025

The party was at the Italian consulate on December 8, 2025 and it felt momentous in that it celebrated the first time that an American has been pictured on an Italian stamp. That American is Senator Robert Kennedy aka RFK, who was being so honored because of the presence in Italy of the RFK Human Rights foundation, and the party was also momentous because among the guests was Harry Benson, the photographer, who shot the image of Kennedy on the stamps and who had been perhaps the last individual to who Kennedy said anything meaningful. 

Harry Benson was born in Glasgow, notorious as Scotland’s most hard-boiled city, Glaswegian males being nicknamed “men wi’ iron teeth“, and he became a photographer whose skills soon had him working in London for a major paper, The Daily Express. Benson photographed the Queen in Balmoral, the royals’ Scottish retreat, but he also covered rough raw material. “I would do any piece of shit that came up without being too inquisitive about it if the Express wanted it,” says Benson, now a feisty 96. “And I would try to get as close as I can to the story.”

Benson’s knack for finding or creating picture opportunities came to the attention of the Beatles, then well on their upward zoom, and began working with them regularly, producing such images as the foursome’s fun pillow fight in the George V hotel, Paris. Then Cassius Clay, Muhammad Ali to-be, shortly before his fight with Sonny Liston, suggested to Benson that he photograph him, perpetrating a fake knock-out of the group. But John Lennon refused, mocking Clay, a 9 to 1 underdog in the betting, as a sure loser and suggesting he get Liston to deliver the faux knock-out. Thus on February 18, 1964 Benson took the Beatles to who he said was Liston, but was actually Cassius Clay, and shot the picture. Lennon was enraged, saying “He made us look like fools”. But Cassius Clay beat Sonny Liston, the photo became an icon and Harry Benson accompanied the Beatles to New York. In the US he remains, based in New York and Florida.

RFK stamp, 1968 by Harry Benson

Benson’s picture taking there covered a broad field, politics very much included, and JFK’s younger brother was a frequent subject, especially after he announced that he was running for the presidency on March 16, 1968. Benson went with him to campaign stops in Utah and Iowa. “He was very compassionate,” Benson says. When the Italian choice of Harry Benson’s photograph for the stamp was announced Kerry Kennedy, RFKs daughter, said “I met Harry when I was six years old when Daddy invited him on a family camping trip on the River of No Return in Idaho. We have been great friends ever since”. She added “My father loved Harry and would always go out of his way to say hi and ask after him no matter how many photographers and members of the press were in the crowd.”

On March 16th 1968 RFK announced his candidacy for the presidency of the United States in Washington, DC, went onto New York to head a particularly jubilant St Patrick’s Day Parade down Fifth Avenue. On June 4th 1968 he won the California presidential candidacy. On June 4th he stood onstage and gave a stirring speech to a crowd at the Ambassador hotel in Los Angeles at the very front of which stood Harry Benson.

RFK on the floor by Harry Benson

At the end of his speech he bent down towards Benson, said “Harry, Harry! I’ll see you in Chicago”. But instead of walking off the stage he turned and began walking towards the kitchen from which he was planning to exit because there was such a crowd that he couldn’t get off the stage to go to his car.

Benson climbed onstage with his camera to follow him. He remembers that RFK was walking towards a welcoming group. But Sirhan Sirhan, the assassin, had appeared. “There was a quick action. I never heard it,” Benson says, “Then the screaming started.” How far away had he been? About ten feet, he estimates. “But getting closer, getting closer. Bobby fell, just crumpled to the ground, you know. I’ve got pictures from start to finish on it. I haven’t got him being shot, but I have got him, you know, he’s lying on the ground, he’s looking up at me, as if he’s trying to say I see you, Harry, I see you. He’s looking embarrassed to be lying down there.”

So to the dark historical photographs. “There were photographers, two, sitting there. And they wouldn’t do it,” Harry Benson says. “There are very few pictures of it. They told me it was because they liked Bobby too much. And I understand that. But I’m from Glasgow, you know. For me it was Don’t fail! Don’t fuck up! I got hit in the head a few times. And they punched me and all that while I’m changing film. I was the last photographer to leave.”