In one photograph, a young man leans against his horse, giving it his weight. His face tucked into the horse’s neck and his arm bent around its chest suggests a tentative embrace. It’s a subtle but tender gesture of surrender to the creature in front of him. In another image, a young cowboy nervously bites his fingers before entering the rodeo ring. The portrait is unguarded; the viewer is pressed close enough to study his downy curls, his freckles, and delicate skin.

Bex observes subtle details in the lives of his subjects, such as a bed made up with horse-themed bedding. Everything about the image is soft, intimate, quiet. Who sleeps there? It’s either a man, for whom it is okay to dearly love horses, or a boy, growing up inside of cowboy culture and within its dreams.

Bex’s visual language is strongly cinematic. In one of his most arresting images, the silhouette of man fills an open entryway between sliding doors. He is a modern incarnation of ​“the stranger,” whose first appearance in a western film is often made through swinging saloon doors. His shadow creeps in ahead of him, menacing. His body is edged in delicate golden light, but his face remains masked by shadow. In the figure of this man could reside many different men, with many different intentions. Is he an ICE agent at the door, someone looking for refuge, or perhaps just a person at the end of a long day’s work?

We may look at the stranger a little differently having been primed by Bex’s previous portraits, to search out a softer read on a person. A good portrait does exactly this- it allows us to sit with the subject, and consider them in all their complexities.

- Mia + Lisa

See more of Alex Bex’s work HERE

Alex Bex received third place place in this year’s prestigious Life Framer Series Award, juried by Mia Dalglish and Lisa Woodward. This competition receives submissions from all around the world, and one exceptional series is selected each year for a solo exhibition.