Roloff Beny (1924–1984) was a Canadian photographer who spent the better part of his life in Rome and on his photographic travels throughout the world. Born Wilfred Roy Beny in Medicine Hat, Alberta, he later took as his first name Roloff, his mother's maiden name. Life Beny was born in Medicine Hat, Alberta on January 7, 1924. Beny studied at the University of Toronto and took art classes at the Banff Centre for the Arts and the University of Iowa. At Iowa, he studied with master printmaker Mauricio Lasansky, who gave him one of his prints. Beny began photographing in the 1950s simply as a way to capture scenes for his paintings before growing more interested in the medium.<ref name=nyt>"Roloff Beny Is Dead at 60; Painter and Photographer." The New York Times, published: March 17, 1984 | | Archived via the TimesMachine, Retrieved 13 January 2023.</ref> He maintained a photographic studio in Lethbridge, Alberta throughout his life and used the studio while visiting his relatives. Development of fame Beny had a considerable reputation and exhibition record as the maker of progressive painting, drawing and printmaking in the late 1940s and early 1950s. He was recognized as one of the leading abstract artists of his day with works of the period exhibited and collected at that time by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the Art Gallery of Ontario, and the National Gallery of Canada, among others. His work in painting, drawing and prints is discussed in Roloff Beny Visual Journeys. His book To Every Thing There is a Season was presented to visiting heads of state during Canada's 1967 centennial celebration. In 1968 his book India was chosen by the Indian Government to celebrate the centenary of Gandhi's birth. Canada, as Beny remarked, had "no temples two thousand years old, no paths worn hard by passionate travelers." But the photographer soon found his way to those paths and temples in the course of "insatiable wanderings in Europe and Asia," and, above all, around the perimeter of the Mediterranean. Beny was in early days a protégé of Peggy Guggenheim and Herbert Read. The circle of friends around him—actors, artists, collectors, writers—included Laurence Olivier, Stephen Spender, Rose Macaulay, Bernard Berenson, Jean Cocteau, Henry Moore, and other makers of art and literature. His books have been published in America, Canada, England, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, Yugoslavia, Denmark,