Photography by Alexander Berg

The photos here were taken during one of two marathon studio sessions in New York City. In 2003, Alexander Berg had received access to an empty storefront through the Chashama space grant program, which provides temporary free space to artists around Manhattan. Like any ambitious photographer, Berg was looking for a novel and powerful idea to catalyze his artistic vision. He says One Shot came to him as a rigorous but playful experiment. “I’d recognized that the first frame of any shoot always held more tension, expectation, joy and fear, and the project became a kind of open question about what can happen in only one frame.” Berg put a sign on 42nd Street outside the makeshift studio, at the epicenter of the world’s most international city, and also emailed friends. Then, for ten hours a day he photographed portraits of any and all comers. The theme was simple: Be as you are or however you wish to be — you have only one frame.