ABOUT THE PROJECT

September 2011

On New Year’s Eve of 2010, I found myself sitting at my kitchen table, simultaneously writing a letter in pencil to a friend deployed in Afghanistan and on Facebook, instant messaging a friend working on a film in Jakarta.   I woke up in 2011, thinking a lot about friendship and relationships, and how we communicate with one another in the 21st century.   On one hand, the letter has a tangibility that makes it seem more genuine and real, while on the other hand social networks provide an immediate way to be part of people’s lives all over the world, often through photographs. For the next couple of months, I started to analyze my use of Facebook and the “friends” I had accumulated in this online world. What I found were some people I hadn’t met in “real life”; a few people I was not speaking to in “real life”; ex lovers with new partners; ex-partners of friends; art dealers, curators and high school friends who I hadn’t seen in over 20 years.  I asked myself,  “am I really friends with all these people?”  So, at the end of February, I set out to find the answer, using the only tool I know – photography.  I decided to visit every one of my Facebook “friends” in their homes and make their formal portrait.  The only thing stopping me was money and time.  I quit one of my jobs, started writing grants and crowd fundraising and “Are you really my friend? The Facebook portrait project” was born.

In the last eight months, I have raised almost $20, 000, completed over 100 portraits, photographed 163 Facebook “friends”, traveled to 11 states across the country and nearly 50 cities/towns.  I have traveled by plane, train, subway, bus, car, bike and on foot.  I continue to be surprised by the number of people, especially (the real life) total strangers, who have opened their homes to me, sharing their lives, their stories, their food, their gardens and their families while allowing my camera to document it. What started out as a personal documentary on friendship and environmental portraiture has turned into an exploration of American culture, relationships, generosity & compassion, family structure, community building, story telling, meal sharing, our relationship to technology & travel in the 21st century, social networking, memory, and the history of the portrait.

I made a conscious decision to travel lightly and unobtrusively, with a digital point & shoot, a film camera and a tripod, and to shoot in each home with only available light.  I then process the film, scan it and put it online as quickly as I can.  I have crawled on the floor, played legos and read books with children I just met, admired chickens and prize roosters, shared a bowl of gumbo in New Orleans (with a friend I hadn’t met in real life), toured the West Wing and listened to stories of family tragedy and strength.  I have learned how people live and create home. When I asked on the project’s Facebook page: “What is home? Is it just a place you live? Is it important to you? Do you share it with friends and family? Do you have photographs of it?” I received some compelling responses:

“There's a dialogue between me and my home, it influences my lifestyle by virtue of its size, its condition, its location and in turn I shape its function by virtue of its contents and what happens within it. It's a mostly harmonious relationship because there's only the two of us here, the house and me and I normally get my way. It's not photogenic at the moment, inside or out but photographs do get made here though they're mostly pictures of its contents, objects I own that probably say something about me, their owner. It's a box of memories.”

“My home is my refuge of sanity in what often feels like an insane world. Here I can be quiet when I need that, or blast my favorite music and dance with the joyful sounds. It is comfort and safety and container of the stuff I have collected along the way.”

“My mind is cluttered, so I like to leave my thoughts around the house, where I can find them easily. I need different little places for different little things - a writing desk, a painting nook, a work table, a music room, a bed with a quilt and a particular pillow. That way I can leave a thought somewhere, go cook dinner, put some kids to bed, and know exactly where to pick it up again. For the kids, play is like work. The playroom is their office, and they spend the days dutifully keeping busy, building imaginary worlds in our shared little space. I fix dinner in their jungle. I read the morning paper sitting on their aircraft carrier.”

The art of portraiture has its roots in aristocracy.  In the 18th and early 19th centuries, commissioning an artist to create a portrait was an expensive, time consuming and formal process. This luxury was therefore exclusive of and became symbolic of power and wealth.  By the mid-19th century technological advances made cameras more widely affordable, and with that, family portraits became a part of everyday life for the vast majority.  With the ease and popularity of family photography into the 20th century, the formal nature of portraits diminished. With the ease of camera phones and the evolution of photography and the portrait has become ubiquitous and even more casual. The traditional family portrait has begun to disappear. One could argue that family portraits are cultural artifacts, telling a story about the lives of the subjects.  I am taking that one step further by making the portraits in their homes, exploring the intimacy of an environment that also tells a story, but is not shared online.  As a token of my appreciation for their collaboration in this project, I am giving the subjects each a color print of their portrait.  I found frequently that this is the first time their family has been formally photographed.

Social media has become a fundamental part of our society in the 21st century.  Its convenience allows us to instantaneously communicate and share a level of intimacy with those we know well and many we don’t know at all. Despite its presence in our lives today, social networks cannot replicate human interaction. It is arguable, however, that the online environments we’ve created and the resulting reduction of human interaction has an impact on our relationships. We simultaneously live in a virtual social network space online while physically inhabiting the space of our home in the real world. My project is an exploration of friendships, the effects of social networks and the intimate places we call home.  Facebook seemed an ideal forum for this exploration. Though we are in the initial stages of understanding the affects of social networking on American culture and photography there is a pervasive feeling that it is changing our interactions with each other and building a false sense of community. MIT technology and society specialist, Sherry Turkle suggests in her book Alone Together:

“There are no simple answers as to whether the Net is a place to be deliberate, to commit to life, and live without resignation…When Thoreau considered “where I live and what I live for,” he tied together location and values.  Where we live doesn’t just change how we live; it transforms who we become. Most recently, technology promises us lives on the screen. What values, Thoreau would ask, follow from this new location?  Immersed in simulation, where do we live, and what do we live for?”

At the completion of the project I will have photographed over 600 Facebook “friends” in their homes all over the world. The result will be a collection of portraits that create a window into the home as each subject defines it.  I have friends in 30 states, 10 countries and 4 continents.   It is my intent that the finished project will be an exhibition (online and in real life) and a book.  Concurrently, I’ve been documenting this project on a blog which I see as piece in and of itself. I have asked that all 600+ friends change their profile picture to the portrait I make of them.

In a short amount of time, this project has gained momentum and seems to be building from its own energy.   The initial audience has increased exponentially from my Facebook “friends” and page followers, by the countless “friends” they are connected with and the international press the project has received. I am able to post work as I make it, have a dialogue with a global audience, and market - in one location.