To celebrate the 10th anniversary of "Touching Strangers," Renaldi has not only launched a new online gallery with 84 additional images from the series but is offering a signed print of "Chris and Amaira" in a limited edition of 15. If you're interested in purchasing it, visit Charles Lane Press.
"It feels like ten years went by really really fast," Renaldi reflected on his "Touching Strangers" series. "I think the project is aging well and that the themes and concepts that the work raises are just as relevant today. One insight that I gained after putting the work out into the world was that the viewer, even knowing that the people in the photographs were strangers, would still have a strong impulse to create a narrative about the relationship of the people in the photographs. That the impulse to understand or imply a relationship between two or more subjects who were total strangers and not related in any way other than their common humanity would be surprising to me."
We asked Renaldi about the inspiration behind his "Touching Strangers" series, and he reflected on the experiences that led him to the project.
"Working on the streets as an environmental portraitist, I was aware of the mass of humanity constantly intersecting on the streets and avenues of New York City. Attentive to the reality that the majority of the millions of people in the city are strangers to each other, I was curious about the connections that exist between us regardless of that fact and the potential for intimacy between strangers. Thinking of the people in the city linked by an invisible adhesive, I wanted to make those connections visible and so when I started working on 'See America by Bus' and photographing strangers together on communal benches at Greyhound Bus Stations, it occurred to me that someday I could try and intentionally make portraits of strangers together like the way I was currently doing on those bus station benches but pose them somewhere out in the world and ask them to step outside of their zones of comfort and physically touch each other. What would that look like?"
We asked Renaldi how the themes of "Touching Strangers" resonate differently today compared to when it was first published. The artist explained that the themes are open to individual interpretation, with each viewer experiencing and perceiving them in unique and varied ways.
"I do think that the universal desire for intimacy is a constant. Illustrating a world where people of various races, religious affiliations, sexes, sexual preferences, and classes mix, interact, and pair up with each other certainly has as much value today as it did a decade ago. I think one thing I didn’t see on the horizon was the rise of fascism and authoritarianism that has spread across the world. Brexit and Trumpism are certainly forces where the consequences were to tear people apart and sow divisions and distrust from one another, which is a contrast, I think, with the intent of 'Touching Strangers', which, at its core, is about bringing people together."
Intimacy and connection are central themes in Renaldi's work. When asked about his future plans, the artist expressed his intention to continue exploring these themes, along with others such as desire, the environment, dance, and social class.
#14 Caleb, Augustine, Ryan, Ignacio, Christina, And Anthony; Kanorado, Ks, 2010
