#socialportraits

The project was born in the summer of 2011, after I have realised that persons I had portrait, were using my portraits as “avatar” in their social networks accounts. So, I started to ask myself a few questions.

How has the concept of portraiture mutated during the ages?
How has the way we benefit of our self image changed in the past few years?
For how many: portraits equal profile picture?
To what end do we have our photographs taken?
So why not realise a photographic social research and turn it into a convincing work of art?
How to find a sample of people willing to join this sort of experiment?

I made contact whit a deal-of-the-day website, then tailored an extremely low price deal for a professional photo shoot, that could lead me to reach the biggest number of various and unfamiliar people.

Among hundreds who bought the coupon, 180 of them have contacted me to have their photograph taken. At the end, after 7 months of shooting I had portrayed representatives from any social class and profession: starting from a chef to an actor, from a manager to a simple employee, from a clerk to a surgeon, up to a whole family.