I talk to strangers. It’s one of my obsessions, and this class in many ways emerged from my desire to understand why. When I began teaching about human social dynamics at NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program (a graduate program for geeks, hackers, technologists, and artists), I jumped at the chance to design a course about stranger interactions. Since Stranger Studies is not actually a discipline, I pretty much wrote the book on it.
Portland-based photographer Jimmy Hickey made this helpful video in which he shares how he goes about shooting portraits of complete strangers he meets during his travels both overseas and on his local streets. He has some great tips that you can easily apply to your own street/documentary photography.
“Cities are machines that produce interactions,” she explained at the outdoor lecture hall. While most of us go out of our way to avoid having to acknowledge persons we do not know, she argues the presence of strangers is probably why you live in a city in the first place. “The culture of cities is a culture of strangers.”
Stranger interactions can be emotional and meaningful. Most of us can recall some insight gleaned from a fleeting interaction with someone at a coffee shop or queuing up for a train. Kio says it’s actually “good for your brain” to talk with strangers as we become more creative when our frame of references grows wider. Stranger interactions make us more tolerant people, and also expand “our sense of the group we belong to.”
