In a media-saturated world, we can learn almost everything about a person we have never met—but is anonymity still possible?

The people depicted retain a transparent sense of privacy. They are represented in relation to their lives, each with a history and behavior that resist easy definition. Most often they exist alone with their own philosophy, psychology, sense of humor, and idiosyncrasies. Some seek anonymity; others do not.

We can know an extraordinary amount about someone before ever meeting them, making the meeting itself seem like an increasingly anticlimactic formality.