The first thing I have to say is that interviewing strangers did not go as bad as I thought it would. When we were first given this project in class I was not excited about the idea of going up to strangers and talking to them. After giving it a bit of thought, I wasn’t as scared and was excited for this project. Now I had the chance to get to know some folks from the city while also making up lies about them. My partner, Yasmin, and I got to work at our first stop, Union Square. It was the evening time after class, Union Square was bustling with people trying to catch the subway after work and others hanging out in the large stairs area. Yasmin and I were rejected the first time we asked to interview someone. The reason they rejected us was because they didn’t want their portrait taken. That was alright, because there were plenty of other humans in Union Square that evening who we could ask to interview. We decided to stop a young man walking to the station to see if he had time to chat. He seemed to be a bit confused at first, but was happy to let us interview him and take his picture. His name was Earl.
Earl had just gotten off his shift at Mount Sinai and was on his way home to Queens. He graduated from York College, City University of New York a couple of years ago. Earl works in the medical system and is a Physician’s Assistant. He was excited to tell us that in the fall he is going back to school to get a graduate degree. Earl told us that he was born in Trinidad and moved to the city when he was younger. After a nice 10 minute interview, Earl decided that he would pose like a college nerd for his portrait. After Earl, we interviewed a few more people and called it a night since the sun was setting and my stomach was grumbling.
A few days later, Yasmin and I decided to head to Central Park. It was definitely a bad idea to try to interview people at Central Park on a Sunday afternoon. The park was packed with tourists and New Yorkers alike. The day at the park was a bust since it was extremely overwhelming with people everywhere doing everything. That same week on Tuesday we decided to go back to Central Park after class. Yasmin and I walked through the park for about 5 minutes before we stopped to interview a woman sitting on the bench. She had just put her sunglasses on before we reached her, so I was afraid she would say no but I already had a plan in my head to interview her. She was very kind and excited to be interviewed by us. We found out that her name was Giarna.
Giarna is originally from New Zealand, but moved to New York City when she was 19 years old. She told us all about how she jumped from job to job when she first started working in the city. Now, she works as a curator for New Zealand artists at a gallery space that she owns in Greenwich. She loved what we told her about our project and came up with her lie of being an Oncologist. After taking Giarna’s photos we thanked her and went on our way to find more interviewees. This is when we came across Carlos, a man who works at Macy’s and watches birds in Central Park during his free time. After interviewing Carlos for a good hour and a half, we left the park and went back home for the night.
The next day, Yasmin and I headed down to Washington Square Park for our last batch of interviews for this project. It was a cold afternoon with the clouds lingering above the park’s fountain. Despite this gloomy atmosphere, we were able to interview a few people before heading home because of the cold. The last person we interviewed was sitting on a park bench with a giant fluffy dog sitting right next to him. This man’s name was Keith, and his dog was a poodle named Norman.
Keith was quite reserved and skeptical of Yasmin and I at first. The only rule that he had for us was no political questions. I had noticed he took a few glances at Yasmin’s scarf a few times before saying this, but we assured him that we just wanted to know about his life. He didn’t tell us exactly where he grew up, but he did say that he was from the Midwest. Keith mentioned that he was retired from working in ads and was now working as an actor. He also said that his wife worked in the fashion industry, so they moved around a lot over the years. We actually caught him 2 weeks before he was going back to live in the Midwest. After interviewing Keith and taking images of both him and his dog, Norman, we left back to the UC to print our photos. Printing and coming up with labels was amusing. Thinking of 8 believable lies for all three of my interviewees was harder than I thought it would be. After all of the printing, cutting, and pinning, it was cool to see what my classmates thought about my portraits. Earl got a lot of college student and geek squad technician labels, but he’s actually a Physician’s Assistant. Quite a few people believed that Giarna was an Oncologist, but she is actually an Art Exhibition Curator. My classmates thought Keith was a photographer, but he is actually an actor who owns a fluffy poodle. This project was an adventure to complete, but in the end it was nice to see everyone’s portraits and pretty tough to pick the truth out of all the lies. I feel the assignment challenged me to identify society’s stereotypes while I was photographing Giarna, Earl, and Keith. I wanted to skew the vision a bit on who these people really were, which made me rethink what I originally had in my head when I first walked up to these strangers. My first impression of them was immediately changed as they started speaking. Now that the project is done with, it makes me feel like everyone has a secret life. Your first impression of someone is not always going to be reflective of who that person actually is, but once you get them talking there is a story waiting to be shared.
