Art & Psychology: The Familiar Stranger
September 12th, 2006
One of the great American photographers of the 20th Century, Walker Evans, is the subject of a new retrospective at the art gallery in investment giant UBS’ lobby in New York City. Evans’ chronicles of the Great Depression, including his hidden-camera shots of subway riders, are renowned for their ‘lyric documentation’ of ordinary people living seemingly normal lives.
Thirty years after Evans’ major work, Yale psychologist Stanley Milgram described the ‘familiar stranger,’ a person we see on a regular basis but with whom we have no interaction – like fellow regular commuters on a subway platform. Milgram, perhaps better known for his controversial authority experiments, wrote that familiar strangers form a necessary bridge in our individual social world between our friends and complete strangers.
Within the blank, emotionless faces of Evans’ passengers we see the familiar stranger, a character unique to the urban landscape. No matter the social networking website, only the interactions of physical spaces can create this phenomenon.
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September 13th, 2006 at 12:10 am
A particularly interesting part of Walker Evans’ photographs is that a view into these “familiar strangers†were enabled by new technology; the now-taken-for-granted pocket camera. As you can imagine, long ago, cameras were large contraptions and Evans’ photos were in a sense the first candid photos taken and displayed in this nature.
It is my feeling that we are continuing on in this fashion where new technology, social networking sites, will uncover and expose new insights into society as well as create new social phenomena.
September 13th, 2006 at 12:12 am
also, for a good laugh at Walker Evans’ expense, listen to this clip on NPR on Hobos : )
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5764627
(thanks Serge, futureproofed.com)