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 them 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 the screen via a webcam, 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. From all over the world.

This sociological/photographic series "B Shot by a Stranger" have been lectured in several colleges and universities worldwide, apart from featured in several publications online and in print, it has always been the subject of masters and final thesis of some students. This is a book of photography, a compilation of the first 2 years of the project. A final book is to be released in September 2015 with new photographs and texts.