A middle child of four, photographer Ben Gest says, “We used to joke about how I kind of fell through the cracks. I think I always felt conscious of how people dealt with each other.” Growing up with three siblings and an attentive mother–“She was happiest when we were all together in the house, and my older brother and I were always out doing something”–gave Gest a keen sense of how the people one loves can impinge on one’s freedom.
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All ten of Gest’s large color prints at Stephen Daiter show two or three people in close proximity but disconnected from each other; many are of his mom, dad, or sister while others show Gest and his girlfriend. Each print has been assembled digitally from 6 to 20 separate photos, and each person is a composite of different images. Working this way allows Gest to remake rooms into oddly sized and angled spaces and to photograph his subjects separately, deepening the sense of their being in different worlds. Sam & Jessica shows Gest’s mom, Jessica, standing before a bathroom mirror fixing her hair while his sister, Samantha, sits on the edge of the bathtub blow-drying a gray dog. (“We used to tease that my mom and the dog have turned into the same person–they have the same hair,” Gest says.) The sink’s unnatural angle to the tub calls attention to the space.
Jessica & Samantha is an image of his mom and sister climbing the stairs side by side, but each looks down, seemingly unaware of the other. By combining images taken from different angles, Gest made the stairway and room in the background seem larger than they actually are–and the seams are hard to detect. The effect is of greater distance between the two women.
Stephen Daiter
