Shizuka Yokomizo

(Japanese, lives in United Kingdom, b. 1966)

Shizuka Yokomizo uses photography and video to examine the relationship between the self and the other. Looking beyond the strictly representational possibilities of the photographic image to what remains unseen, her work draws on the potential of these media to convey the often intangible contours of an encounter between photographer and subject, to suggest multiple vectors of awareness, and to uncover a dialogue between public and private realms. Her series Stranger (1998–2000) centers on a momentary confrontation between observer and observed. At its core it is a collaboration of sorts: Yokomizo sends her subjects an anonymous letter proposing they stand in the front window of their home at a specified date and time, at which point the artist arrives outside, sets up her tripod and camera, exposes her film, and then leaves. The subjects are instructed to turn on all their lights, wear their usual clothing, and remain still—or if they choose not to participate, to signal this by drawing their curtains. Because the hour selected is during the night, Yokomizo’s subjects can discern the photographer only as a dark silhouette.

If the camera long ago proved to be the perfect tool for the pleasure of witnessing someone caught off guard, the success of Yokomizo’s Stranger series, in contrast, depends on the willingness of her subjects to place extraordinary trust in a stranger. Asked to perform, her subjects acquiesce. But Yokomizo deliberately remains visible to her subjects—if only as a shadowy figure—and in a sense she is performing for them as well, acting out the role of the anonymous, voyeuristic photographer—a familiar but persistently disconcerting trope. Yokomizo prompts the viewer to adopt her vantage point, staring in through the window, but her pictures make it difficult to slip comfortably into the detached position of viewer-as-voyeur since they unremittingly imply the photographer’s presence. In this manner her photographs are more highly charged records of an encounter than they are conventional portraits. Perhaps tellingly, her images register the tension of these moments as well as their unpredictability. Yokomizo speaks of being nervous before going to photograph a stranger, but rarely in her work is her own vulnerability underscored to the degree it is in Stranger (5), which was recently added to the Museum’s permanent collection. In this photograph the window frame, visible in most of her pictures, is notably absent and a young man stares out defiantly, even aggressively. Without the clear demarcation between inside and outside the gulf between photographer and subject seems less stable and the implications of the encounter less certain.

After studying philosophy at Chuo University, Japan, Shizuka Yokomizo went on to complete a B.A. at Chelsea College of Art and Design, London and an M.F.A. from Goldsmith’s College, London. Her photographs have been exhibited at Museo d’Arte Contemporanea, Rome; The Photographer’s Gallery, UK; Spacex Gallery, Exeter, UK; The San Diego Museum of Art; and Wako Works of Art, Tokyo; as well as other venues in Europe, the United States, and Japan. In 2003 her work was included in the Venice Biennale, the First ICP Triennial at the International Center for Photography, New York, and the Tate Triennial, Tate Britain, London.

- Karsten Lund