Project - F R I E N D S

First - Background

Last summer, I was in San Francisco and was able to see the Richard Avedon exhibit at the SF-MOMA. If you haven't seen it, it'll stop you in your tracks and you should keep an eye out to see if its coming to a city near you. The exhibit is comprised of the most amazing black and white portraits of essentially everyone who's played a significant part in 20th century. Writers, composers, artists, models, actors/actresses, politicians, musicians, heads of state...average Americans in their own back yard. I HIGHLY encourage you to spend a few minutes reviewing Avedon's work HERE.

Seeing his work, full size - I'm talking, the size of your front window - was hugely inspiring to me and got me thinking about how I would like to complete a project inspired by Avedon's work.

I'm not proclaiming to be an original with my approach but I'm confident that I'll be able to accomplish, and create something special. The project is inspired by Avedon and it is not my intention to copy his work. This is about more than just taking pictures; its about getting to know you and capturing our conversation.

So what is this about? How are you involved and how does this work? Whats the end result?

This is about you and me and a couple hours together, a conversation that covers the good, the bad and everything in between...maybe a drink or two. I plan to record our conversation while we talk and I snap away. The goal here is to draw out emotion, capture it and learn a bit more about each other in the process.

All you need to do is sit on a stool, and have a good time.

Once I have all the content, it will be time to sort through the shots, edit them and select a choice line from our conversation to companion the selected photo. The goal here is to add a little more depth and meaning to the image.

How will this be presented?
My vision is to ultimately create a book once I have everyone's photos. Each page will have a photo on one side, and the selected text on the other. Clean and simple. As the work evolves, I may elect to present the work in progress on my blog just to keep interested parties up to speed on the progress of the effort.

I've done a proof of concept for the look and feel that I'm targeting. You can view that HERE

So who's interested?
Drop me a line, let me know you want to be a part of this project with me. I'll be reaching out to folks individually HOWEVER DON"T HESITATE TO RAISE YOUR HAND! This is about getting to know people better than I already do and creating something together. I'm happy to work with anybody - so don't sit and wait to hear from me if you're itching to be a part of this.

We'll be in touch!

rick.donohue@gmail.com