Sixty-Second Strangers, No. 1

Can a One-Minute Phone Sketch Be Art?

Sixty-Second Strangers is a Belgian digital artist from Leuven who draws strangers encountered in cafés, trains and waiting rooms. He observes each person for exactly one minute, then draws their face from memory on his smartphone using only one finger, without looking back or correcting the portrait.

His portraits are not intended as accurate likenesses. They record which facial features remain in memory after a brief encounter—and which have already been forgotten. A device normally used to capture perfect photographs becomes a tool for recording uncertain and incomplete memories.

Critics dismiss Sixty-Second Strangers’s portraits as crude phone sketches built around a simple gimmick. He considers them records of attention: each drawing preserves two fleeting minutes shared with someone he will probably never see again.

Sixty-Second Strangers, “Sixty-Second Strangers, No. 1”, 2026. Digital drawings created on a smartphone using one finger. Print from the digital file. 80 × 80 cm (31.49 × 31.49 in.). Museum of Modern Art, Department of Rejected Artists. Purchase with funds provided by the Digital Art Committee. ©️ Sixty-Second Strangers. Photo by Jean Chapeau.