Stranger (9)

Shizuka Yokomizo has explored photography’s complicated relationship to voyeurism most innovatively in her series Dear Stranger (1998–2000). Yokomizo selected potential portrait subjects based on their residences—ground-floor apartments in Berlin, New York, London, and Tokyo—and then mailed anonymous letters asking the inhabitants whether they might stand in front of their apartment windows at a set time in the evening so that she could photograph them. The recipients of her letters were instructed to turn on all their lights, wear their typical clothes, and remain still; or, if they were unwilling to take part, to lower their blinds or draw their curtains. In this way, all those addressed knew that their apartments were being watched, and that they were interacting with a stalker of sorts. The appointed time always came in the evening, so that the subjects could discern the photographer only as a silhouette. Yokomizo promised to refrain from any exchange with her addressees: No knock on the door. No conversation. Only two complete strangers fully complicit in the act of photography.