BIO

Ben Gest (American, 1975- ), born in Caldwell, NJ, earned a BA from Rutgers University and an MFA in photography from Columbia College, Chicago.  His ongoing work describes narratives of couples and families in domestic settings; photographing his subjects separately and subtly arranging them together digitally into emotionally and physically disconnected scenes.  Gest's new large-scale works are contemplative portraits of single subjects lost in thought while performing mundane tasks.  He manipulates the images, digitally reconstructing many frames of one scene into one idealized version, creating exaggerations in proportion, focus, and perspective.  Gest's images engage in photography's history of telling the story of human life while challenging its traditions and expanding its visual language.  Gest has exhibited nationally and has been collected by such institutions as The Art Institute of Chicago, The Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, the Museum of Contemporary Photography and the LaSalle Bank Photography Collection.  His photographs have been shown in solo exhibitions at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, The Renaissance Society in Chicago and Light Work (April 2007) in Syracuse, NY.  Gest currently works as an Adjunct Professor at Columbia College, Chicago.

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