Welcome to the Crowdsourcing Mornings segment! Every weekday morning, Geek Alabama talks about and features one crowdsourcing project from crowdsourcing sites such as Kickstarter, Indiegogo, and others. The hope with Crowdsourcing Mornings is to feature and help a project be successful and reach its fundraising goal. Please enjoy today’s featured project!
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In May of 2022, I left it all behind— my job, my cats, my home— just to live in the front seat of my car for 84 days, drive over 15,000 miles to all of the lower 48 states, and ask 1,000 total strangers for life advice before photographing each of them on black and white film in a 50-year-old camera. I wanted to figure out what it meant to make the most of life according to ordinary people, and now you get to see the photos of those strangers and read what they said!
My name is Imran Nuri. I’m an artist and storyteller, and I’m ready to turn this massive photos series into a 640-page, 10×10 inch coffee table photo book called ADVICE FROM AMERICA: Life Advice and Photos of 1,000 Strangers from 48 States.
After graduating college via Zoom in the Spring of 2020, right at the start of the pandemic, and spending the next two years watching the world go through a massive loss of human life, I couldn’t help but ask myself one big question: If I knew I had a year left to live, what would I do with it?
The answer was clear. I would figure out the meaning of life according to ordinary people across America and photograph them to create an everlasting body of work to share with the world.
The journey challenged every aspect of who I was. Talking to strangers was way out of my comfort zone, I had never lived in a car before, I quit my job, and I used a combination of my entire savings, Patreon, and a personal loan to fund the cost of it all. Sleeping at highway rest areas, casino parking lots, Walmarts, and occasionally on friends’ couches around the country, I planned my next destination each morning. My days were spontaneous, which was perfect for the serendipity I was looking for in meeting strangers.
I did as little research as possible on the places I visited so that I could form my own opinions of where I was. As I walked up to strangers, I would say, “Excuse me? Can I ask you a question real quick?” to which 99% of the strangers I approached said yes. About 80% of those were able to take the time to chat with me as I asked them about what they wished they had known earlier, what they had to learn the hard way, and what they wished they could tell a younger version of themselves.
After telling me their story, we would formally introduce each other (yes, most strangers shared their words without us knowing each other’s names until the end), and I took just one black-and-white film photo of them using my 50-year-old camera. The scary part about this is that I didn’t develop my film along the way— a small voice in my head constantly wondered if the film would just come out blank. Of course, you’re on the Kickstarter page for the book, so you already know that the photos turned out beautifully, and that’s what you get to see in ADVICE FROM AMERICA.
As of July 10th, this project has raised $59,000 of their $25,000 goal. This project has 3 days left to raise as much as it can. For a pledge of $55, you will get one hardcover book. For a pledge of $90, you will get two books. To learn more and to pledge money, go to: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/imrannuri/advice-from-america?
Categories: Crowdsourcing Mornings Stuff
