Richard Renaldi: Jeromy and Matthew, Columbus, Ohio, 2011
Richard Renaldi has been working on the Touching Strangers series since 2007. His process involves approaching and asking complete strangers to physically interact with each other while posing together for a portrait. Working on the street with a large-format, 8-by-10-inch view camera, Renaldi encounters the subjects for his photographs in towns and cities all over the United States.
The photograph Jeromy and Matthew, Columbus, Ohio, is an example of how Renaldi pairs up his subjects and invites them to pose together intimately, in ways that people are usually taught to reserve for their close friends and loved ones. Renaldi creates spontaneous and fleeting relationships between strangers for the camera, often pushing his subjects beyond their comfort levels. These relationships may only last for the moment the shutter is released, but the resulting photographs are moving and provocative, and raise profound questions about the possibilities for positive human connection in a diverse society.
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