40 Neighbors

Every day for 40 days, I asked a person in my neighborhood, “Can I take your picture?”

By Tim Chambers

April 21^st, 2014

I’m an introvert, so when I’m out taking pictures, I’m hesitant to approach and talk to people. During Lent 2014, I worked on a daily project to push myself to interact with people in my neighborhood and my city. My task for each day of the 40-day period was to introduce myself to a person on the street and ask if I could take their picture.

Working on this project was both interesting and frustrating. It was interesting to see how people reacted when I asked, and to see what they did when I took their picture. A few people said no—one man grilled me for five minutes on my motivations for the project and what he should get out of the arrangement before ultimately refusing. Most people I approached were kind and happy to cooperate. I wouldn’t direct people on what to do or how to pose, so the photos are interesting documents of what people feel is the proper thing to do when having their picture taken. There were a few curious outliers, like Joe the knife sharpener who was engaging beforehand, but when I took his picture, looked down at his iPad and never looked up again. Or the man with the beard who said yes, I could take his picture, but didn’t stop walking away, and when I asked his name, he said, “In a hurry.”

The project was also frustrating because some days I failed to work up the courage to ask anyone if I could take their picture. Perhaps I was feeling too introverted at the time, or was too shy to interrupt people who seemed busy. Or perhaps I was too focused on looking for “interesting” people that I overlooked the neighbors nearby who would have been kind enough to participate.

My goal for the project was not to make great photographs, but to push myself to be present in my neighborhood and to confront my usual propensity to retreat into my mind. The photos are simple—a catalog of the people I met and where I met them. These are my neighbors—some people I still see every day on my walk to and from work, and some I encountered only once.