2022 -

Stranger is an ongoing portrait series that explores encounters between strangers using performative and self-portrait methods.

The images focus on a method where Mäntynen meets a stranger for the first time and immediately start taking photos together. Together they ask: How do we pose for a photo? Can we touch each other? What can we do together?

After the photos, they get to know each other and try to find things that connect them, which the “stranger” can write down in a notebook.

The project has been made in Germany, Tenerife, Benin, Finland and Italy so far.