Valerio Magrelli on touching strangers in the age of Facebook

US photo artist Richard Renaldi captures moments of physical contact between strangers with his camera. His pictures make an important statement about the quest for and fear of contact in the age of social networks, in which contacts are established online, writes poet Valerio Magrelli in the left-liberal daily La Repubblica: "Richard Renaldi has understood the importance of human contact within the anthropological interaction system. … At long last we humans are forced to give up the biological safety distance that every living being maintains with regard to others. We are forced to cross the boundaries of proxemics [the science of distances in verbal and nonverbal communication], … physical boundaries, but also boundaries between classes, races and religions that keep us from making even the simplest physical contact. It reminds you of the 'shake hands with each other' at church, because this brief shaking of hands powerfully breaks the taboo that keeps a distance between one person and the next in our social life."

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