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, 2011, 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.

Pigment Print
Image Size: 12 x 16 inches
Paper Size: 22 x 17 inches
Edition of 15
Signed, captioned, and numbered by the artist

Richard Renaldi (b. 1968, Chicago, Illinois) graduated from New York University with a BFA in photography in 1990. He is represented by Benrubi Gallery, New York, and Robert Morat Galerie, Berlin. Manhattan Sunday is Renaldi’s fourth book, following Figure and Ground (Aperture, 2006), Fall River Boys (2009), and Touching Strangers (Aperture, 2014). In 2015, he was named a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellow in Photography. He has been included in numerous group shows, including Strangers: The First International Center of Photography Triennial of Photography and Video, New York, and a solo exhibition at Yossi Milo Gallery, New York, among others.