Overview

Since 2007, Richard Renaldi has been working on a series of photographs that involve approaching and asking complete strangers to physically interact 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. He pairs them up 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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9781597112499

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Reviews

Often posing his subjects in a way one might for family or couple photos, Renaldi attempts to capture an implied narrative, bringing a new complexity to portrait-making and visual storytelling.--Erik Tanner TIME Lightbox (10/04/2011)

Often posing his subjects in a way one might for family or couple photos, Renaldi attempts to capture an implied narrative, bringing a new complexity to portrait-making and visual storytelling.--Erik Tanner TIME Lightbox

...the collection has a captivating strangeness to it that reveals the sensitivity we have about each other's skin.--Allison Meier Hyperallergic (04/25/2014)

Most photographers capture life as it is, but in these strangers, Richard Renaldi has captured something much more ethereal and elusive. He shows us humanity as it could be--as most of us wish it would be--and as it was, at least for those one fleeting moments in time.--Steve Hartman CBS News

Touching Strangers, a monograph by the Chicago-born photographer Richard Renaldi, would have fit nicely as a capstone for Bussard's case studies, as it pushes the notion of street photography even further. Renaldi meets strangers on the street and asks them to touch or embrace one another; he then photographs these arrangements as group portraits.What makes Renaldi's photographs thrilling is that, even knowing his strategy, the viewer can't help fabricating a story about the subjects' relationship. We weave narratives around them -- who they are, the unlikely tenderness that might exist between strangers.--Anna Altman The New York Times Book Review

Author Information

Richard Renaldi graduated from New York University with a BFA in photography in 1990. Renaldi is represented by Benrubi Gallery, New York, and Robert Morat Galerie, Berlin. Other books by Renaldi include Manhattan Sunday (Aperture, 2016), Fall River Boys (2009), and Figure and Ground (Aperture, 2006). In 2015, he was named a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellow in Photography. Richard Renaldi graduated from New York University with a BFA in photography in 1990. Renaldi is represented by Benrubi Gallery, New York, and Robert Morat Galerie, Berlin. Other books by Renaldi include Manhattan Sunday (Aperture, 2016), Fall River Boys (2009), and Figure and Ground (Aperture, 2006). In 2015, he was named a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellow in Photography. Teju Cole is a photographer, essayist, and author born in the United States to Nigerian parents and raised in Nigeria. He is the author of two works of fiction: Every Day is for the Thief, a novella, and the novel Open City, which won the PEN/Hemingway Award; the New York City Book Award for Fiction; the Rosenthal Award, from the American Academy of Arts and Letters; and the Internationaler Literaturpreis, from the Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin. He is a contributor to the New York Times, the New Yorker, and other publications.

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