Amit, editor of photojojo and I met for the first time and started the stranger project. Inspired by Roark Johnson and Youngna, we stood in Union Square in New York City and took portraits. We take your picture, you get a lollipop.
People in New York are trained not to make eye contact or interact with strangers. Saying hello to someone, gets you a cold stare if anything at all. What finally broke the ice, was when people saw other people getting lollipops. Amit and I both took photos and I can’t wait to see what his shots look like. Check them all out at strangerproject.com!
You know you wanna do it! Go get yourself a piece of foamcore or posterboard, write “We take your picture, You get a lollipop” on it and you’re good to go. Oh, and you need lollipops. We used blowpops. A notebook is necessary to get their names so that you can tag them and they can find their picture. We told people this, “What’s your name so that I can tag it with your name on flickr and you can see it later tonight.” It works better with two people and then you get to compare styles! I got the domain “strangerproject.com” and so you can send people to that because it just forwards to the flickr group.
The results were great. I took some great portraits. I was using my grandpa’s Canon 10D with my 15mm fisheye. Click the link to see my favorites photos from the day.
Great idea, also applicable in Seattle. Sometimes I stare onerously or smile widely at strangers on the sidewalk just to see how far people go with avoiding eye contact. Anyway, you could help people find their photos by getting moo cards (http://www.moo.com/flickr/) with the path to the tag already printed (http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/strangerproject). I did this for party photos, printing the tag path or a path to my username and a blank where I write in the tag for that event…works great!
Nice photos. I love how the light plays on the face of the young woman with the fur rimmed jacket. And you can see your own shadow on the laughing woman. Do you think you got more pics of women because you are a cute man or because women were more interested/flattered to get their pics taken??
Really great idea and some fantastic shots as a result. Kinda reminds me of something from 2005 I shot… http://photofaye.blogspot.com/2005_07_17_photofaye_archive.html.
[...] This week, I met up with Make’s Bre Pettis who recently arrived in NYC and we spent some time shooting strangers in Union Square. (Favorite shots: one, two) [...]
[...] Bre Petis has been doing some great photography projects recently including the webcam photobooths, fauxtography [with Steve Garfield], the stranger project and the self portrait cult. Bre is awesome! [...]
Way-to-go Amit… looking forward to seeing more photos. Can you please click some having the lollipops as well
Next stop, Timesquare.
Interesting work
That leaves me with an idea- to market my current vocation of doing candid portraits at the clients place or hangouts-for an assignment fee. Its http://www.sepiastory.com
Im inspired to go to a public place do the same- let me see how Indians will respond to this. Will be interesting .
Manoj
Chennai
http://www.sepiastory.com
hey this is a cool idea..me wants to trys it out here too
heya, I tried something really similar in Newtownards in Northern Ireland.. people here seem to have that weird eye contact thing too… I was doing the project as part of a response to Gillian Wearing’s “signs…” project so I just got people to write signs rather than doing the lolly idea.. It was tricky and to be honest I did get a few rather harsh responses to a 15 year old trying to finish her art project but twas fun all the same =]… my next project… to draw randomers in starbucks and other cafes without their knowledge.. (part of a response to August Macke’s “Ladies in a cafe”.. well that’s aimed for easter after my mocks so I’ll probably post a blog on deviant about how it goes… or more likely if it goes and I don’t chicken out.. xD well done on your project.. seems to have gone very successfully, did you get any rude replies with your’s??