Joan Benney was born in 1967 in the San Francisco Bay Area,the last in a family of nine.Early influences include being mystified by the scenery on the altar while unassumingly attending church with her siblings.Following the narration of important events taking place, all invisible to the eye, fired up her imagination.These events contributing to the beginning of her identification with metaphor as a means to understand her cultural surroundings and visual story telling as a mode of connection.In 1987 she was given her first fully manual camera, leading in time to her studies at the Photographic Center Northwest in Seattle.She has lived and worked on a small rural island off the Northwest coast of Washington for many years.This landscape, not unlike the tennis courts, the cul de sacs and other arenas of her girlhood,has infused her work with allegory, furthering her exploration of identity in connection with environment.She show's her work regionally, and mentors youth in her community in traditional darkroom techniques.