Today we're meeting with artist Tanja Hollander, an artist
who began her career as a landscape photographer
but who since 2011 has been on a mission to photograph all 626
of her Facebook friends in their homes
and take their formal portrait.
She's titled the project, "Are You Really My Friend?"
and has been traveling all over the world,
visiting friends, acquaintances, and people she barely knows.
Right now we're in North Adams, Massachusetts
at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, where
she'll be displaying the completed project in 2017.
We're going to be talking with Tanja about ideas of friendship
and what that means in this, the age of social networking.
So let's go meet Tanja and see what kind of challenge
she has for us.
Hi, I'm Tanja Hollander, and this is your art assignment.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
For me, when I'm in that state of mind of photographing
the landscape, it's a really quiet place and a really serene
and alone place.
Whereas the portraits are almost the exact opposite.
They are about the spaces that people live in,
and all of the things that they collect and surround themselves
with.
And they are about sort of creating that community
in an internal way instead of an external way.
I was home alone on New Year's Eve of 2010.
I was instant messaging a friend,
who was working on a film in Jakarta, on Facebook.
And at the same time, I was handwriting a letter
to a friend who was deployed in Afghanistan.
And I started thinking about those two friendships, and how
they were from really different parts of my life,
but both people were important to me,
and also the two ways of communicating.
And how the handwritten letter felt much more personal,
but it was really amazing that I was
able to connect with his friend, so far away, online.
So I just started thinking about friendship and relationships
in the 21st century.
And how things are changing because of the internet,
but how things are also staying the same, and if that
is something that's photographable.
One of the things that I'm thinking about
and that I thought about at my exhibition at the museum
was how to bridge the analog versus digital gap
in transferring this project that had only
existed online into something that could exist in a museum
setting.
And I was so excited about the collaborative aspects
of social media, of people being able to comment on photographs
and have this conversation about what real friendship meant
on the projects Facebook page, with strangers from all
over the world that I wanted to bring that element somehow
into the museum setting.
And so I designated a wall with Post-it notes
that people could write what they thought a real friend was
on a Post-it note and then literally post it
on the museum wall.
Since that time, I collected all of these Post-it notes,
in the museum, of what people thought a real friend was.
And then I've also collected them
whenever I do lectures and have other exhibitions.
So now I've got these Post-it notes from all over the world,
in different languages, different color Post-it notes,
about what people think a real friend is.
And that, to me, has become a really important part
of the project.
Your art assignment is to make a formal portrait of a friend.
And you can define friend however you want
and place however you want.
And as an added bonus, I would love
for you to send me a Post-it note, written in pencil,
of what you think a real friend is.
You know what Tanja's project reminds
me of is all those eccentric travel books where
people go on these quests.
Like, my favorite one is "Playing the Moldovans
at Tennis."
Have you ever read that book?
No.
This guy, Tony Hawks, he goes and--
The skateboarder?
Not the skateboarder.
No, that's Tony Hawk.
This is Tony Hawks.
Got it, got it.
Two hawks.
Anyway, he plays the entire Moldovan national soccer team
at tennis.
It's great.
Really good book.
All right, so if we could transition this
to a discussion about photographic portraiture,
that might be good.
(LAUGHING) Fair enough.
So if we want to think about this topic,
I mean, it really goes back to the beginning
of photography itself.
Right, people took portraits as soon as there were photographs.
But back then, you had to sit really still.
You had to do, like, your Blue Steel for a long time, like--
Right, well, cameras tended to be bigger
and harder to lug around.
And there were longer exposure times necessary.
I'm still doing my Blue Steel.
Please, please stop.
Anyway, so in the 20th century, more and more photographers
started to get out of the studio and into the world with lighter
cameras, shorter exposure times, and to do more intense,
ambitious photo series.
Oh, like August Sander, "People of the 20th century?"
Yeah.
That is one of my favorites.
Yeah, August Sander for sure, and Robert Frank, and Lisette
Model, and lots of interesting photographers.
Another epic photographic road trip
was Robert Frank's "The Americans."
He began traveling around the US in 1955,
documenting a wide swath of American life.
We see cars, open stretches of road, diners,
media consumption, and flags, signs
of the flourishing of postwar American consumer culture.
But Frank's style differs considerably
from Tanja's, whose systematic approach and careful framing
might call to mind German photographer August Sander's
series, "People of the 20th century."
Beginning in the early 19 teens, Sander
attempted a comprehensive record of his country's people,
taking hundreds of portraits of German citizens
and categorizing them by occupation,
making what he called a physio gnomic image of an age.
Sander wasn't the only one who believed the spirit of the time
could be read in people's faces, an idea that would prove
to be problematic in the turbulent and traumatic years
to come.
But his riveting photographs, like Tanja's, put you
in direct eye contact with his subjects,
offering the feeling of familiarity,
despite the distance of location or time.
Tanja's project is also a reflection of its time,
taking you into the intimate, domestic spaces
of her digital friends and giving you access
to information not often apparent when viewing,
say, a Facebook profile.
TANJA HOLLANDER: I always do it a self-portrait
when I hit the road.
We are going to photograph Denise Markonish, who is not
one of my Facebook friends.
GPS VOICE: In 2.2 miles, turn right on Harris Street.
But she's curating my show at MASS MoCA.
And I think it's important that she's part of this project.
[KNOCKING ON DOOR]
DENISE MARKONISH: Hi.
TANJA HOLLANDER: For me what a formal portrait is
is really paying attention to the space around the person.
And I think that's the difference
between the snapshot.
I'm very calculated of what I include in the frame.
And I try and get the light just right,
as well as all of the cool things that people have
in their house or lack of things, which I also
find really interesting.
Who has tons of stuff and who doesn't have that much stuff,
and how that defines the person's personality
and environment.
I think you can almost tell more about a person
by the things around them.
And then also the aspects of formal portraiture.
They're sitting still, and they're
paying attention to the camera and not other distractions.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
I decided when I was going to start
shooting that a real friend is somebody that you share
a meal with, that you invite into your house,
that you argue about art or politics,
drink a little too much red wine.
And then you're still friends in the morning and it's all fine.