Closeness Generator

When I first began the Studio Art comps process I knew I wanted to create photographs that had to do with this idea of time passing, or time that has already passed. Since then I’ve become focused on the project I am now calling Closeness Generator. Psychologist Arthur Aron and others conducted a study called “The Experimental Generation of Interpersonal Closeness: A Procedure and Some Preliminary Findings,” in which they attempted to generate closeness, or love, between two strangers by having them answer a set of thirty-six specific questions together. The conversations that follow force mutual vulnerability and therefore, according to Aron, promote closeness. For my project, I have created long-exposure portraits of thirty-six people as they each answer a different question from the study. I have also recorded and transcribed the audio from these “interviews” and in the final book format the portrait exists next to the transcription. A reader will see the participants’ motions and emotions that they expressed in the interview in the long-exposure portraits, and they will also be able to read the participants’ answers to each question. My hope is that reading this book can generate a sort of closeness between the readers and the anonymous-looking strangers included inside it