Ben grew up in Fayetteville, Arkansas, raised by hippy dippy parents who taught him to remain idealistic about a world that’s often dark. As an Emmy and Edward R. Murrow award-winning-photojournalist at KARE11 TV, Garvin was named 2011 Journalist of the Year by the Minnesota Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists and photographer of the year by the Minnesota Press Photographers Association in 2007. In 2017 he served as president of the Minnesota Society of Professional Journalists where he helped overturn a ban on photography in state prisons. His work on assignment for the New York Times was included in the paper’s Pulitzer Prize-winning story on food poisoning in 2010. In 2012 Garvin published an award-winning photography book called “Ant Farm, Glimpses of Daily Life in Minnesota”.
Previously Garvin worked for the Pioneer Press and Star Tribune in Minnesota, the Christian Science Monitor in Boston and the Concord Monitor in New Hampshire where was named three-time New Hampshire Photographer of the Year.
Garvin studied creative writing at the University of Arkansas before earning a BFA in Visual Journalism with a minor in philosophy from the Rochester Institute of Technology in Rochester, New York. He lives in South Minneapolis with his wife Jessica, a cellist and baker, and children Arthur, Lewis, Bailey and Netta. Love Them First is Ben’s first documentary as a director.