Benjamin Fredrickson describing his work


Thanks to everyone who attended the Benjamin Fredrickson Artist Talk on January 18! An attentive audience crowded Daniel Cooney Fine Art to hear Artist Member Benjamin Fredrickson in dialogue with Visual AIDS Programs Manager Alex Fialho, discussing the works on view as well as Frederickson’s broader photographic practice on the occasion of the debut solo exhibition of his unique Polaroid photographs. Images from the event were taken by Social + Diarist.

Fredrickson’s exhibition has received exciting press from the following outlets:

The New Yorker

Gayletter

Next Magazine

Dazed Digital

The exhibition runs through February 28 at Daniel Cooney Fine Art (508 West 26th Street #9C).

Fredrickson’s images document his years as a sex worker in the Midwest, his private sexual life and his community of gay men both in the Midwest and New York City. Fredrickson himself appears in many of his images as an active participant in the culture he photographs. He is pictured sitting on the lap of a “John”, having intercourse in a dungeon and in various other sexual scenarios, sometimes exploring S/M and fetish. His photographs of other men are at once loving and honest and brimming with sexual desire and lust. Most of his subjects look directly at the camera, aware that they are being observed and presenting themselves for that purpose.

As part of the Visual AIDS June 2014 exhibition “Ephemera as Evidence,” Fredrickson contributed a pop-up photo studio in which he welcomed subjects to be photographed in his temporary home away from home at La MaMa Galleria. The consistent theme throughout Fredrickson’s images is the longing for and sometimes the event of human connection, either by sexual interaction or through the act of photographing and being photographed. He makes himself vulnerable and in turn his sitters reveal themselves for his camera and the viewer’s gaze.

For more photos from the event, visit VisualAIDS.