If you can photograph it, it is not a dream.

From May 9 to June 8, 2023, on the campus of Haifa University (Israel), I asked strangers to take "family pictures" together. The pairing was based on serendipity. If two or more passers-by were willing to be curious and see what it looked and felt like, we walked to the open-space studio I had set up as part of an exhibition updated in real time. I asked participants what their relationship would be and how they would get photographed if they were family members. I'm struck by humans' ability to ignore one another in public spaces. With this project I created a safe space where people could experiment with crossing the mental, socially-acquired barrier we set between us and strangers. For the first time as a portrait photographer, I didn't have to ask people to "stop smiling": the smiles were always genuine and interesting, whether they came out of shyness, goofiness or the almost childlike joy of connecting. From a social point of view, a central function of photography is to document and reinforce social bonds, especially family ties (Bourdieu, 1965). Here I tried to make playful use of this ability in a perspective of "relational aesthetics" (Bourriaud 1998, 2001)