Sunday, August 31, 2008

The $2.00 Portrait Project

The $2.00 Portrait Project (Flickr)
Earlier this week I decided that I was going to start a new project. I'm calling the project $2 portraits and the project works like this. From this week going forward until the day that I die I am going to offer $2 to anyone who asks me for money in exchange for their portrait. While I'm taking their portrait I'm going to ask their name and try to learn a little bit about them. I plan on doing this for the rest of my life -- assuming that I can afford to.

To make things easier I'm putting $2 in reserve money in a special place in my wallet so that even if I don't have change I will always have the $2 to hand over.

In part I'm undertaking this project because I realize that I've been avoiding people asking me for money. My biggest motivation behind this project however is simply that I think human interaction is a good thing. I'm not doing this to exploit homeless people or show how hard and bad life can be. I'm doing this because I want to celebrate other human beings as human beings and I think that this commercial transaction gives us an opportunity to engage and interact on a more human level... and I also think that I can take a pretty decent portrait.

-- via grow-a-brain

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