The Calendar of Wooden Boats^®

Benjamin Mendlowitz, photographer

Benjamin Mendlowitz has traveled the globe for over 35 years to photograph wooden boats. He is well known throughout the boating world for his contributions to nautical publications and for his award-winning Calendar of Wooden Boats.^®

Mendlowitz grew up in New York City. His passion for wooden boats began during the summers of his youth at the New Jersey seashore, where he visited and was influenced by the local traditional boat builders. After graduating from Brandeis University and one year of farm work and photography in Florence, Italy, he began a photographic career in Massachusetts. In 1980, Mendlowitz photographs began appearing in WoodenBoat Magazine and in other nautical publications. A few years later, Mendlowitz formed his company, NOAH Publications, and published his first Calendar of Wooden Boats.^® The company has since expanded its product line to include books, cards, and other items, all featuring Mendlowitz photographs of wooden boats. Benjamin Mendlowitz Marine Photography, a division of NOAH Publications, offers a stock photography service and custom photographic prints. He is also a founding member of OffCenterHarbor.com, a website devoted to content about classic boats and boating skills of all kinds.

Mendlowitz photographs have appeared regularly on the covers of many trade and educational books, and in feature articles and on the covers of the most respected boating magazines (past and present) world-wide, including , WoodenBoat, Nautical Quarterly, Sail, Yachting, Cruising World, Motorboating, Professional Boatbuilder, Ocean Navigator, Maine Boats, Homes & Harbors, Soundings, Chasse-Maree and L’annee Bateau (France), The Boatman, Classic Boat, Yachting Monthly and Maritime Life & Traditions (Britain), Canadian Yachting, Yacht (Germany), and Arte Navale (Italy).  His work has also appeared in magazines such as Time, Esquire, Money, People, Atlantic Monthly, Connoisseur, Historic Preservation, Field & Stream, Down East, Yankee, Sports Illustrated, Road & Track, Men’s Journal, The London Times Magazine, The Boston Globe Magazine, The New York Times Magazine, Graphis, Architectural Digest, Forbes Life, among many others.
 
Mendlowitz's newest book, Herreshoff: American Masterpieces created in collaboration with Maynard Bray and Claas van der Linde, was published in November 2016 by W.W. Norton & Company of New York. In 1998 Norton published Wood, Water & Light, a large-format, full-color book featuring more than 180 of Mendlowitz’s finest early images with accompanying text by Joel White. W.W. Norton subsequently published seven additional books of Mendlowitz photographs: A Passage in Time (1991), on Maine’s schooner fleet, text by Peter Spectre: The Book of Wooden Boats (1992), a “best of” collection from past editions of the Calendar of Wooden Boats , text by Maynard Bray; The Guide to Wooden Boats (1996), a photographic study of traditional sailboats, text by Maynard Bray; The Guide to Wooden Power Boats (1998), a companion volume to the first Guide featuring some of the most stunning and well-cared-for wooden power boats afloat today, text by Maynard Bray; The Book of Wooden Boats, Volume II (2000), text by Maynard Bray; a soft-cover edition of The Guide to Wooden Boats (2010); and The Book of Wooden Boats, Volume III (2010), text by Maynard Bray. Two other books published by NOAH Publications, Joel White: Boatbuilder, Designer (2002), with text by Bill Mayher and Maynard Bray and Aida  (2012) by Maynard Bray, feature his timeless photography.

Benjamin has taught courses in marine photography at the Rockport Photographic Workshops and the WoodenBoat School, and is a frequent lecturer at various maritime museums and institutions. He has been the featured subject on several television shows, including Boatworks, a PBS television series; True North, Maine Public Television; Chronicle, WCVB-TV Boston; and Thalassa, a popular French program about the sea.

The Philadelphia Maritime Museum mounted a one-man show entitled “Wood, Water and Light: The Classic Wooden Boat Photographs of Benjamin Mendlowitz,” which subsequently traveled to numerous maritime museums nationwide. Other exhibits of his work are or have been on view at Mystic Maritime Gallery, Mystic, CT; The Old Post Office Gallery, Thomaston, ME; Art of the Sea Gallery, Camden, ME; Harbor Square Gallery, Rockland, ME; Washington Street Fine Art Photography, Marblehead, MA; North Star Galleries, New York, NY and Newport, RI; The Museum of Yachting, Newport, RI;  the International Yacht Restoration School, Newport, RI; the Herreshoff Museum, Bristol, RI; The Mariners’ Museum, Newport News, VA; Northeast Fine Art, Northeast Harbor, ME; the Penobscot Marine Museum, Searsport, ME; and a special show in Sarnico, Italy.
 
Mendlowitz was born on February 14, 1948 and educated at the New Lincoln School, New York, NY, and Brandeis University (BA, 1970). He lives with his wife, Deborah Brewster, in Brooklin, Maine.