Karen L. Fingerman, my academic collaborator, and Calvin Morrill, one of the scholars whose work also contributed greatly to the foundation of Consequential Strangers, are quoted today in a New York Times article, Window Watchers in a City of Strangers. The article makes the point that we have always been fascinated by other people’s life–a preoccupation captured in Hitchcock’s Rear Window and more recently in project by Gail Albert Halaban, a fine art photographer who created Out My Window NYC. As Ms. Halaban put it:
“In a large city where there’s a lot going on around you, it can feel very isolating and lonely. By having contact with these total strangers through the window, it’s a safe way of having a relationship without the hard part of a relationship.”
Of course, you who follow this blog or have read the book already know that strangers can morph into consequential strangers–the wash ‘n’ wear relationships of everyday life that also require little maintenance–and then travel along the relationship continuum toward the more intimate end. Julie Scelfo, who wrote the Times piece, makes this point, too:
“Those who don’t mind watching and being watched, though, sometimes find that good things can come of it.”
Scelfo recounts the story of Debrah Pearson Feinn, a Soho artist who, for several months, had an “anonymous relationship” with a painter living across the street. It began when he started observing her at work. Finally, Pearson Feinn, said, the other painter
“called me and said ‘Hi, I wanted to introduce myself.’ We literally started a friendship,” she continued, “and he came over and had dinner with me and my husband.”
And so, they went from stranger to consequential stranger and, as Scelfo reports, “More than 30 years later, they’re still friends.”
Related posts about the relationship continuum:
