Bio
“In between before and after” are fragments of everyday life. splintered situations involving strangers and anonymous urban locations. Each frame is an ambiguous, minimal short story whose beginning and ending are not told. Oblique framings and use of geometry and reflections create an intense feeling of detachment and anxiety.
Ben Zucker’s pictures are strangely sad and ironic considering our shared experiences on city streets as sometimes up-close and personal. The images bring us close to the people in the pictures; we draw tentative conclusions, perhaps make judgments, and we feel their anxieties even when we don’t understand them. There is a general mood of unease and sense of alienation. A certain impersonal detachment clashes with the intimacy of proximity and identification.