Never been done before

..what a shame!

Complete strangers, who have never met photographer Richard Renaldi nor their co-photographee! Complete strangers in the warmest embrace, an affectionate and almost passionate pose put together in front of a camera. That is what happens in Richard's Touching Strangers project. Taking people out of their comfort zone and make them think beyond racial and ethnic beliefs. The pictures makes you wonder what happens after it was taken.  Do both individuals just walk away and get on with their day? After interviewing some of them for the CBS Evening News serie "On the Road", Steve Hartman finds out that some actually felt connected, felt they cared for eachother.

That does say a lot of todays human society. We needle to cuddle more and not only embrace life, but also start talking to strangers and interact with eachother. The Touching Strangers project came to life while doing See America By Bus in 2003. Here he photographed people in Greyhound bus stations across America. After realizing he was taking pictures of strangers simply sitting next to eachother made the next step an obvious one. In 2007 he started asking people to physically interact with a complete stranger..and he just took a picture.

As many of these wonderful finds, I found this on the internet while looking for Kickstarter projects. Richard has recently launched a joint project on there with Aperture to fund a special edition book of his Touching Strangers photographs.

I think this project and the photographer are awesome and I suggest you'd check him out as well on Kickstarter.