Shizuka Yokomizo

'Dear Strangers', by Shizuka Yokomizo, is a series of photographs. The photographs show a series of people standing or sitting in a room. The photographs are taken through the window of the room from a street, and the people are looking through the window at the camera. The pictures are like a representation of what anyone can see through people's windows.

 

 

The artist has been influenced by the theme of spying on people. The work looks at how different people live their lives, in different place around the world. The way that he chose to display this is taking a picture of different people in their own homes through their window, even though the artist has asked people to stand in a certain way, these are real people and this is their own home and where they live. It makes you feel when you look at the pictures, as if you were spying on them and almost invading on their personal life. This theme that the artist has looked at in this work is what I'm looking at in my theme of 'press rights'. And how people now have more of an urge to spy on people, for different reasons for example to find out what there up to, or get some information, and different ways like looking through someone's window or what the press have been doing to sell stories is to hack phones or private accounts.

But it's not just the newspaper's that are trying to get private information to sell to the invasive British Public , as there is now the online world, and things that encourage voyeurism (looking at people and following people), for example sites like Facebook and Twitter. Where people and organisations can post or tweet information about things that interest people.

So 'Dear Strangers' by Shizuka Yokomizo, is a piece of artwork that reflect on how people have a natural instinct to find out private information about organisations and people, and linking it to my theme is how the Press have capitalized on this, and went the extra mile (hacking phones) to sell stories to people and if it is right or wrong.