Alexander Benz

I explore the space between subjects and their environments, sometimes from afar, sometimes close enough to see them breathe.

My work lives somewhere between street photography and portraiture, borrowing from both but belonging fully to neither. I observe, I approach, I ask and then I reconstruct the moment with my subject's participation. What might appear to be a captured instant is more often than not something re-enacted, a kind of joint resonance between myself and a stranger. This collaboration is built into the work, even when the images don't necessarily reveal it.

Working exclusively in black and white, I strip away distraction and let form, light, and human presence carry the weight. I'm drawn to the tension between what a photograph reveals and what it withholds. The sense that we're always seeing someone incompletely, constructing who they might be from the limited evidence we have access to. This, to me, feels true to how we actually encounter one another.

Over time, the distance has narrowed. Figures once absorbed into architecture have stepped forward. Identity, once only suggested, now dares to emerge. Connecting rather than just observing. Holding a gaze long enough to feel a presence in the moment unfolding in ...

- Photography full-time study at International Center of Photography, New York, USA
- Masters in International Curator Management Education, University of Stockholm, Sweden.

2022 - Group Exhibition at Les Patios, Lens, France
2021 - Group Exhibition at LoosenArt Gallery, Rome, Italy
2021 - Group Exhibition at SE Center of Photography SC, USA
2019 - Group Exhibition at More Art Please Gallery

2006 - Group exhibition at ICP, NYC

2004 - Group exhibition at Zwicky Gallery, Zurich
2001 - Solo exhibition at Rote Fabrik, Zurich
2000 - Group exhibition at Zwicky Gallery, Zurich
1998 - Group exhibition at The Art Club, NYC