Notice me. I am here. I exist. In this moment, I am real. Efforts to stave off loneliness when one is in fact alone, selfies represent desires to share and connect. They are both document of and testament to hope. Absent from selfies is the community, both real and imagined, that the photographer reaches out to. “Imaginary Friends & Family: Portraits” includes this community in the frame as a move to say not just Notice me. I exist. but, more importantly, to claim I am here with you. In this moment, we are real together.
This photo-text series was hatched in a spirit of play on my walk home late one Warsaw night in November 2013, and I continued to add to it as I encountered imaginary community in the shop windows and on the billboards and kiosks I pass in my everyday travels…until it became too warm to wear a hat.
The series was featured on January 13, 2014 in Hyperallergic’s “I, Selfie” series by Alicia Eler:“Watching the Selfie Olympics.”
Ashley David 