The Bureau of General Services—Queer Division and Daniel Cooney Fine Art are very pleased to present New York City artist Benjamin Fredrickson’s solo exhibition at the Bureau’s space in The LGBT Community Center on 13th Street. This exhibition coincides with Fredrickson’s collaborative exhibition with Juan Betancurth at Daniel Cooney Fine Art in Chelsea.

The exhibition, titled Salon, will feature previously unseen Polaroid photographs and new images made with paper negatives. Fredrickson’s early work documents his sexual life and his community of gay men. His new work, while less explicit, unexpectedly offers deep intimacy and beauty among his subjects. Fredrickson relies on his intuition while working with his subjects and achieves an ephemeral quality that is unique to this new work.

Fredrickson himself appears in many of his own images as part of the culture he photographs as his work is highly autobiographical. He photographs other men but he never photographs “the other”, instead he is interested in revealing himself, his humanity and his vision of the world around him. His photographs are loving and honest, brimming with sexual desire. Many of his subjects look directly at the camera, all of them are aware that they are being looked at and gladly present themselves for that purpose.

The consistent theme throughout Fredrickson’s images continues to be a longing for human connection, either by sexual interaction or through the act of photographing and being photographed. He makes himself vulnerable and in turn his subjects reveal themselves for his camera and the viewer’s gaze.

Fredrickson graduated from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design in 2003 and moved to New York City in 2010. He has been included in the Museum of Art and Design’s “New York Makers”, group exhibitions at Darkroom Gallery, La Mama Galleria in addition to collaborations with Visual AIDS. His work has been published in Apartamento, BUTT, Capricious, Dazed and Confused, and Pin-Up. He is represented by Daniel Cooney Fine Art.