Benjamin Gibson is a Canadian award-winning Toronto-based photographer and Creative Director whose work examines the uneasy overlap and coexistence between darkness and beauty.

Gibson’s practice draws from both personal experience and broader social conditions, engaging subjects that range from recovery and identity to systems of consumption and environmental change. He grew up in a rural part of Ontario surrounded by nature and has always had a connection and reverence for the world around us. Gibson was drawn to Toronto’s urban environment and moved to the city centre at eighteen.

He began his artistic practice painting on canvas, but moved into commercial film and photography after the technical aspect challenged his curiosity. Much like life it began simply but Gibson challenges himself relentlessly, to a fault.

Gibson studied Art and Design and Humber College, but attributes most of his practical skills to lived experience, intuition and forced-improvisation through moments of commercial work, design and physical design and production. He learned sometimes the answer comes, because it simply has to come.

Through Gibson’s years working in the film and commercial production industry he gained – in a sense – a new unwelcome best friend, addiction. Common in the commercial design and creative world, his recovery was slow and life-altering. Now he works as a dry artist that is both present for work, and holds an overflowing need to explore unique and personal topics through creative expression.

Gibson has had several solo exhibitions in Toronto and participated in juried group shows internationally. Gibson is a 2nd year artist at Toronto’s Artist Project in 2026. Gibson’s work has been published in a number of Art Publications including Divide Magazine, Photographica and Nauvo Arts Magazine among others. Gibson received the 3rd Prize Modern Muse – Photo Artfolio in 2025; and his photography book Canada Series 1 A Photography Book was a finalist in the 2025 Urban Photo Book Awards. His work has contributed to the Toronto Archives and the National Gallery of Canada Archives.

ARTIST’S STATEMENT

My photography is driven by the pursuit of contrast—not only in light or colour, but in subject, situation, and juxtapositions posed by life itself. I am drawn to moments where beauty emerges from what is often considered unsightly, and where hard truths are revealed through seemingly beautiful landscapes and situations.

I approach subjects and chosen-techniques holistically and intentionally. Most often my work can be considered street photography, the most raw expression of my artistic experimentation and discovery. As an artist I also explore landscape projects, conceptual techniques and staged fine art images, along with a great deal of thought put into materials and finishing and presentation.

My work observes a world shaped by systems of consumption, for survival. I’m interested in a subject when meaning is produced through tension rather than resolution. I see beauty and grit as overlapping forces, unable to exist independently of one another. They are locked in a continuous cycle—each defining and sustaining the other, like a snake eating its own tail. It is within this friction that I find my images.