Artist Embarks on Quest to Photograph All 788 of His Facebook Friends

For many, Facebook has become a messy, unorganized jumble of close friends, casual acquaintances and people you really have no business being connected to but are too polite to delete.

Connecticut artist Ty Morin, however, is on a quest to make his friend list come to life. He plans to track down all 788 of his Facebook friends in person, one by one, then photograph each person doing something meaningful to them.

He says it's more than just a fun adventure, though â€" it's also an effort to reclaim some of the human connection lost in an increasingly digital world.

"The goal of this project is to reconnect with people," Morin writes on his Kickstarter fundraising page. "No more hiding behind the screen of social media. Stop looking down at your phone and pretending you're texting your BFF when you walk by an old friend from high school. Lets get out there and remind people what it's like to have a face to face conversation with someone."

Morin's not the first to take on such a journey â€" artist Tanja Hollander is working through her friend list as well in something called The Facebook Portrait Project â€" but it's still a pretty cool idea.

Morin has taken to Kickstarter to help fund the quest, and so far the results are good. His goal is to raise $5,000 by March 26, and he's already topped $3,000. That money will cover the cost of travel, film and dark room chemicals. He also plans to film the entire process for a documentary.

A couple caveats give Morin's project an extra bit of intrigue, as well. First off, he estimates he's never actually met more than half of his several hundred Facebook connections, so he's sure to make plenty of real-life friends along the journey. He's also forsaking the now-ubiquitous ease and speed of digital photography for an old-school 8x10 camera, meaning each portrait will take about an hour to finish. That, he says, will force him to spend more time with his friends-turned-subjects.

"I'm going to do this the old fashioned way," he writes, "like back in the day when the idea of a photograph was more than just something to post on the Internet."

Is this a cool project worth backing? Let us know what you think in the comments.

Homepage image courtesy Ty Morin via Kickstarter