A
woman has stunned people with her resilience after going round many
countries just to photograph her several Facebook friends.
Tanja Hollander
Ever take a look at your Facebook friend list and wonder ‘how many
of these people are actually my friends?” Well, artist Tanja Hollander
did, and after thinking about if for a while, she decided to find out
the answer to that question by visiting all of her 626 Facebook friends.
She documented the experience in an epic 5-year-long project called “Are You Really My Friend?”
It all started on New Year’s Eve 2010, when, after conversing with
some of her online friends, Maine-based artist Tanja Hollander stared
wondering what her relationship with all the people in her Facebook list
was. She asked herself if friendships formed online were as real as
offline ones and if many of her “friends” were actually just
acquaintances.
“Am I really friends with all these people?” Tanja told herself, and she immediately knew she had to find out.
The plan was pretty straightforward, she had to go visit all her
626 of her Facebook friends, spend time with them, and take photographs
of them for an art project. She ended up traveling an average two weeks
per month, for a period of five years, but she actually managed to visit
all the people in her friends list, documenting every encounter on her
Facebook and Instagram accounts.
When her epic journey ended, in 2016, Tanja Hollander had visited
four continents, 12 countries, 43 U.S. states and had been welcomed in
over 400 homes. Most importantly, she had found the answer to the
question that started it all.
“One thing is for certain,” the artist told Upworthy. “There
isn’t a difference between online friendships and offline friendships.
It’s something that weaves in and out of everything we do, from work to
friendship — everything, literally. There are some people that I see in
person more often than friends that exist only online, but that doesn’t
mean I’m closer to the people I see every day. Social media is just a
different way of communicating.”
Speaking with Aplus, Hollander said that “Are You Really My Friend?”
proved to be a way to create a very intimate experience with people
that otherwise feel like they only exist in a virtual reality. As for
photographing her friends in their own homes and often staying with
them, the artist claims that it brought her closer to them in a way that
most people will never experience with all of their Facebook friends.
“I feel connected to all the pictures on a different level than
just friendship, they are part of this giant social experiment and art
piece I made,” Hollander said. “That’s maybe hard to explain. I
think there are friendships that are important at various times in our
life, and that’s OK. There doesn’t need to be a hierarchy like there was
in 6th grade.”
The epic art project also became the subject of a documentary which
was successfully crowdfunded on Kickstarter earlier this year. It
consists of footage shot by Tanja Hollander during her 5 years of
globetrotting, not knowing what she should do with it.
“Are You Really My Friend?”, the documentary was officially released on March 18.
****
Via Oddity Central
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