Gonzalo Bénard: lo sconosciuto della webcam
Nato nel 1969 a Lisbona, Gonzalo Bénard è cresciuto visitando musei e mostre grazie all’influenza del padre. Dopo gli studi dedicati alla scultura, alla pittura e alla fotografia, Bénard ha iniziato a lavorare in alcune gallerie d’arte e in centri culturali come il Centro Culturale di Belém, il più importante di Lisbona, e ha coordinato la linea editoriale della rappresentativa portoghese alla Biennale di Venezia del 1995, ricevendo i complimenti dell’allora ministro della cultura.
Le sue esibizioni più famose si sono tenute a Lisbona, Barcellona, Londra e Parigi, dove Bénard risiede e lavora dal 2012.
Il lavoro che ci ha inviato si intitola B Shot by a stranger, e fa parte di un progetto a cui è associato un libro acquistabile online su Blurb.
Le immagini raccolte sono state catturate da Bénard attraverso una webcam con la quale ha filmato, in una sorta di gioco voyeuristico, giovani volontari sconosciuti che si sono prestati per farsi immortalare nelle loro attività quotidiane. Il risultato è una collezione di momenti privati condivisi dai soggetti con il fotografo, in un duplice gioco di silenzio/assenso, dove la volontà di essere visti si mescola con la distanza rispetto all’occhio che li osserva senza giudizio. Una riflessione sui nuovi mezzi della rete, sulla necessità dei giovani di scoprirsi rispetto al mondo, sulla caduta dell’etica del privato, e sulla carica erotica nascosta in queste pose fugaci e casuali.
Il progetto non si è fermato ed è in continua evoluzione. Se siete giovani e interessati a diventare modelli per nuovi scatti, trovate le informazioni a questa pagina.
Scrive Bénard, a proposito dell’opera: «Their plans were just cancelled and they’re home alone. Usually they go out and meet friends. Not this evening. They turn on their laptop, put some music on, and subconsciously they’ll start searching for something easy that will make them feel better. They talk to a stranger in an online chat room as if they were meeting him at a bar. They feel safe because they’re home. They prepare a drink. A snack. They talk. They share.
For the subject it’s so much easier to share with a stranger who will not judge you. They know that they’re being shot. They feel good doing so. They feel that you are someone giving them the attention they need at this moment when they feel lonely. They expose themselves. They play. They laugh. They talk. They pose. Naturally. Being themselves, feeling safe, shot by a stranger. A stranger that they can trust.
Gonzalo Bénard is the stranger that is shooting – a long distance voyeur – young volunteers who are lonely in their homes; the process becomes a kind of sociological game – Bénard becomes the witness of their solitary habits. Shooting via satellite, like a security camera, he records their private moments, never leaving them while they cook, shower, read, drink, play, sleep or dance alone in their own private places. Worldwide.»
«When I first started creating this project in my mind I had no idea how interesting it would be, and especially how much I could learn from it – in so many ways. What I learned about people, about human feelings, the subjects’ reactions, how they face emotions, how they (we) grow up building our own rituals to survive emotions, or how psychological or sociological this became. Also, bringing a new meaning to what is it to be a photographer.
A camera has always been a tool of voyeurism; I’d not realised that before. Till I started the B Shot by a Stranger project . . . and stretched the boundaries. Street photography can be as voyeuristic as shooting a model posing. A war or disaster photographer catching moments of pain and distress uses the camera as voyeuristic tool too. But none of this can go as far as watching someone in their vulnerable, intimate, nude, private, lonely moments.
Most of the volunteers are young people with a social life, people with life, regular people with emotions and feelings even if they have masks to hide their emotions and feelings towards society (don’t we all?). However, when they go back home, alone, they feel their own loneliness, some emptiness, some “facing ourselves feeling”. University students or workers, most of them are experiencing their first years of life living alone or sharing flats far from their families. Experiencing their first more serious break downs. They’re young and experiencing the first steps of adulthood. How to deal with new emotions, how to face them. Building defences and rituals to help them fight and grow up.» (Gonzalo Bénard)
