Man on mission to meet his 788 Facebook friends
Connecticut photographer believes friendships may be possible offline.
Confess: How many people in your Facebook list of “Friends” could you truly count as friends? How many could you call to borrow a car? Any faces in there that you’ve never even seen outside of a 1x1-inch profile pic?
Ty Morin, a young photographer from Burlington, Conn., has hundreds of Facebook friends, and he wants to keep it real. He has a plan to photograph 788 Facebook friends, and he’s launched a Kickstarter campaign to fund his friendly foray.
“The goal of this project is to reconnect with people,” Ty describes on the Kickstarter page for Friend Request: Accepted. “No more hiding behind the screen of social media. “
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Ty’s plan is to photograph each of his friends doing something he or she is passionate about, and he’ll keep a video diary of his visits. A trailer showing the first handful of subjects is strangely infectious. One friend is shown in fireman’s gear, another practicing ballet. A young woman wields a mean blowtorch. A burly guy pushes barbells over his head in a clean-and-jerk (passion: to become a superhero).
As HuffPo notes, it's not the first time someone has made news by wanting to meet their friends — strange as that sounds. All of Ty’s subjects so far appear to be nearby friends, but since launching the campaign he’s received notes from around the world. His Facebook page shows invites to meet new friends as far flung as Michigan, Europe and India. It’s easy to see why Ty is a good candidate for this experiment, too. Just look at how generously he sees friendship as an opportunity to share things, like chewed food.
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The Kickstarter campaign went live on Feb. 26, and within a week had raised $4,000. At Daily Dose press time today, Ty had raised a whopping $12,853, thanks in no small part to coverage of his venture in newspapers, on TV, and online — and one $5,000 donor (Dad? Are we friends?).
Ty will use the lion's share of Kickstarter money to travel by plane, train and automobile to shoot friends with his 8x10 camera, a process that takes much longer than a smartphone snap. But it gives him time with friends he’s never seen before and may never see again.
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Photo: Ty Morin via Facebook, http://aka.ms/Ty
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