(Image above) Dolly Parton, Nashville, Tennessee, 1976 © Harry Benson

It is my privilege to be a wOw Woman who has – like my wOw Sisters – been affectionately involved with the great, the fabled photographer Harry Benson. If you think the wOws look good on this site, we owe it all to Harry. And we don’t quite know how we got so lucky because Harry is much too rich, too generous, too knowing and too famous for any or all of us to deserve him.

Now our friend Harry has brought out another book of his legendary work titled simply Harry Benson: Photographs. On every page, a Benson icon, a Benson moment, a Benson epic of rock stars, movie stars, kings, queens, jacks and aces, champs and chumps, presidents and peers, politicians and pop persons and their names are legion – Sinatra, Jackie, OJ, Ike, LBJ, JFK, Ali, Diana, the Queen, the Reagans in love, the Bushes at play, every movie star that mattered, Princess Margaret, the Beatles in their youth, Andy Warhol and his entire scene, Truman Capote, models, military men and moguls, chess masters and musicians, the Chicago police quelling a riot and the death of RFK in a kitchen. I could go on and on. And when Harry has a particular memory about the moment he snapped a certain picture, he tells us about it in his inimitable, informal style.

He is a reporter on all levels. This book is certainly autobiographical from the frivolous ’50s to the swinging ’60s, the excessive ’70s, opulent ’80s and self-possessed ’90s and on past 9/11 and the dawn of the 21st century.

That perspicacious master of luxury, John Loring, writes knowingly about his friend Harry in the introduction. He sums up: “Fifty years after he photographed her in coal miner’s garb, the Queen of England in her honors list … made Harry Benson a Commander of the British Empire. The honor was richly deserved.”

And we all-American wOws honor our Scotsman as well. He is the commander of our hearts. —Liz Smith