One of the ways to handle these peoplescapes is to return the attention back to the personhood. The New-York-based artist Brett Amory addresses the issues of connection and anonymity in his series of oil paintings that feature local people on the streets of New York: through the prism of his works, we are suddenly made aware of those that we are used to seeing as random people in the city, bystanders, passers-by on the streets, waiting in the line at the fast-food joints or at the corner store — they are all strikingly familiar and complete strangers to us.

A slightly different experiment was conducted by Elena Geroska¹¹, a Bulgarian artist living in Slovenia, who crossed this social barrier by approaching strangers on the streets, asking their permission to take pictures of them in their own homes. The gallery of those who agreed reveals an interesting glimpse into the private world behind each person — their home. The project yielded fascinating results, demonstrating how the homes act as a portrait of us and the way we shape our homes in our image. It seems that with increasing levels of intimacy with the space, our qualities become more reflected on our surroundings.

In a way, all the places we inhabit are a reflection of ourselves, just as each work of art says something about the artist. We are affected by our environment, we reflect it to each other and are affected in turn. Art is a way to evolve our perspective and address the issues that raise from the way we understand and use space.