Friends and Strangers Friends and Strangers

Within cities, we are all neighbours. City life entails the coexistence of numerous people living in close proximity, whose relationships, encounters and interactions are largely products of chance and serendipity. Life-paths may intersect, or they may not. Architect and photographer Ali Taptık’s contribution to the Istanbul Biennial is a photographic installation with a virtual component, entitled Friends and Strangers (2017). The work tells a story about individuals from four different parts of Istanbul and their unexpected crossing of paths.

Presented at the Galata Greek School the seven photographs are on display on four stairwell landings. Friends and Strangers reflects on questions such as empathy, proximity and interconnection within an urban context, asking, ‘How do we relate to individuals we don’t know?’ The work portrays three people who are invited by a photographer to meet at his studio. Here, they undergo a social experiment based on a model of intersubjective closeness developed by American psychologist Arthur Aron. Aron posited that our personalities are largely formed by the people with whom we are close, and devised a set of questions for people to ask each other in order to encourage intimacy. Taptık’s characters come to know each other in this way, as well as through questions from a 1967 questionnaire by Swiss writer Max Frisch.
The online component of the work is interviews with Taptık’s characters: Mehmet, an art patron and a CEO engineer, whom the photographer met at a fundraiser, and who collects the photographer’s work; Merve, a strong-willed architect, who is politically active and has been a friend of the photographer since school, and Cem, a skilled printer – a quiet and selfless character with an intense interest in the city’s flora and fauna. Employing Frisch’s questions, Aron’s method, photography, storytelling and interviews, the work reflects on the conditions of mutual understanding, co-existence, urban life and the ways in which we relate to individuals.