Shadows like Punctuation

I babysat for an American family over the weekend. They're renting the 17theme home of a Parisian photographer.

His work, blown up on the kitchen and living room walls was so incredibly impressive.

I got his name:

BEN NASON

With SPARE, Ben Nason moves away from the lyricism and expressionism of Night Diary. Through form and composition, he attempts to find a new way of capturing the experience of alienation. Seeking direct light and neutral spaces, he decides to photograph an urban park in broad daylight, filled with people out walking.

For a year he photographs the same space. The washed-out ground of the public garden becomes a stage and the people, captured alone and together and always with their faces hidden or out of frame, become the players in an anonymous, universal human drama.

Over time a visual language emerges. The human beings are isolated in white space like words on a page, with only their shadows as a kind of punctuation. They become dramatic signifiers - sometimes poignant, sometimes comical, depending upon their stance or their place in the composition.