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Single and Looking for
The project Single and Looking for took shape as a project to investigate the nature of artistic intent, participatory integration and documentary tradition in photography. Conceptual art serves as a framework in order to raise questions concerning the above issues and the context where they exist. The work also embraces portraiture, one of photography's oldest and strongest traditions as a procedure to enhance the documentary aspect of the work, reinforcing structuring the critical perspective around the common dichotomies such as fact/fiction and copy/original. Single and Looking for is a work that explores the nature of relationships. What interested me in engaging this topic is the social reality that half of all U.S. marriages end in divorce. To have a fresh perspective on the issue I set up a table on the streets of New York with signs reading "Art Project" and invited single passersby to be part of the project.
People were first asked to fill out an affidavit listing the top five priorities that they wished their next partner to hold. Incorporating the role of a notary public, I then notarized each affidavit, using an objective public ritual to intensify the participant's subjective personal reflection. Finally I took a portrait photograph of each person. Participants left the site with copies of their affidavits, aware that such document, along with their pictures, would be published as part of a book project and displayed for public view.
The decision to document people's desires by combining the roles of artist and notary public was motivated by a number of expectations. I felt that in the view of the participant, the act of formally expressing private desires in the public domain, via sworn affidavit, might transform abstract wishes into concrete requirements, allowing desires to be viewed more pragmatically and relationships to be approached with greater commitment.
While the project takes its aesthetic cues from documentary photography, which traditionally demands a formal 'objectivity', the addition of the written texts provided by each participant gives a particularly subjective lens through which the photographs may be viewed. The ritual of the notary's seal formalizes these subjective desires and wraps them in an aura of objectivity.
The photographic portrait serves as a magnifier of the subject's self-perception, creating tension between fantasy and reality, exploring an economics of desire. It also actively differentiates the individual subjects for the viewer, allowing them to associate unique faces and expressions with the various texts, which otherwise would remain abstract lists.
The "documentation" and certification of each subject's internal and external expressions of hope, desire and feeling underscores our cultural obsession with 'original proof' as the primary form of commitment. Single and Looking For is not just a window onto others' desires, but an invitation to enter and explore a world of desires, expectations on how we relate to others.
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Single and Looking for