Johanna Siring made the Roskilde Festival in Denmark the setting for Kiss of a Stranger. The project pairs portraits taken before and after a participant kissed the photographer, turning a brief encounter into a visible comparison.
Siring first took a portrait, explained the proposal and asked for a consensual kiss before making another picture. The expressions can differ, but the pair alone cannot reveal a person's more authentic self.
The following is Siring’s interpretation, not a verified universal biological effect of kissing. She told i-D magazine: "Kissing sparks all the nerve endings in your lips, causing a release of dopamine and a surge in oxytocin. It's an instantaneous stress reliever and creates an immediate emotional bond between two people."
The feature introduced Siring as a Norwegian artist based in New York. Her series approaches connection through the circumstances of a photographic encounter, with the participants helping determine what becomes possible.
"We are all just human beings with the same basic instincts. By creating new relationships and learning about the thoughts and ideas of strangers, we might be able to build bridges and combat ignorance and judgment,” Johanna told i-D.
More info: johannasiring.com | Instagram | Facebook (h/t: i-D)
Reference: Bored Panda
An encounter happens between the exposures
By the second portrait, more than a kiss has happened. The participant has met Siring, heard the proposal and spent time in an unusual situation with a camera. The later expression belongs to that whole encounter. This makes the comparison interesting as portraiture, even without assigning one cause to every change.
The hormonal explanation in Siring's quoted remarks is her interpretation, not a conclusion established by the photographs. The series is an artistic project, with no controlled comparison to separate the effects of expectation, conversation and physical contact. Each participant also makes distinct choices about being photographed, being kissed and having an image shared. Their involvement is part of the work's meaning: the portraits preserve a collaboration between people, not an automatic transformation produced by a technique.
The paired format also asks the viewer to remember the first expression while meeting the second. Neither frame tells the whole encounter, but their proximity makes a small visible change the project's central event.
Continue with a related feature: Danny Evans' Celebrity Makeunders Play With Image and Identity.
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