With two weeks down, participants in Alec Soth’s Flickr project have been asked to be brave, curious souls and venture out into the world to tell a short story through pictures. As a way of generating the story, Soth asked participants to first find and photograph a stranger, then “Ask the stranger to show you something (their house, their car, their cat, their body, etc).”
From there … well, things could go in any number of directions, as evidenced by this early entry from Benjamin Borley (bart1eby) , whose story presented here eventually explored his views on graffiti.
“I was wondering whether I was going to be brave enough for this one when chance threw an opportunity my way.”
“On the way into town I was stopped by a woman with beautiful blue eyes.”
“I’m a spastic,” she said, “I’m allowed to call myself that.”
“She asked me to read the graffiti for her because her eyes weren’t too good.”
“I’m not sure,” I said.”
“But I think the middle word is love.”
“She didn’t like that and told us about a graffiti wall that the council had set up.”
She much preferred the graffiti there.
“For the rest of the day I was more aware of the graffiti.”
“I wondered whether it was art.”
“or vandalism.”
“and whether I preferred it on the walls of the city.”
“or on the walls of shops.”
“and on greeting cards…”
See how other photographers’ stories are coming along here — or join in the project yourself.
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