Stranger, made by Tokyo-born, London-based artist Shizuka Yokomizo from 1998 to 2000 across cities in Europe, the United States, and Japan, portrays unknown residents standing at their windows at night. Yokomizo approached prospective participants anonymously by leaving a letter beginning "Dear Stranger" at selected homes. It asked them to stand in their illuminated front room at a specified time, dressed as usual, while she photographed them from the street; they were not to speak or meet, and could refuse simply by closing the curtains or not appearing. The project grew from Yokomizo’s experience of estrangement in England, where illuminated, street-facing windows offered views into domestic space while keeping her physically outside.
That threshold becomes a way to examine physical proximity and psychological distance, as well as the borders between self and other and private and public territory. Because participants knowingly return the camera's gaze, the work also interrogates consent, voyeurism, surveillance, trust, and control. Yokomizo sought to reduce the distance between two strangers without dissolving it, positioning herself so that a later viewer could occupy her place. The window thus functions as both frame and protective barrier.
Across the 24 color photographs, figures stand frontally in ordinary clothes within lit rooms, while Yokomizo remains outside on a dark street. Curtains, blinds, bars, and security gates divide the picture into layered rectangles. The repeated viewpoint and still poses create compositional consistency, but gestures and expressions vary from direct openness to crossed-arm reserve. Household light differs from room to room, and incidental details such as a televised football match preserve the contingency of each encounter. She worked from a tripod, sometimes using a ladder for high windows, and generally arranged meetings around 8 p.m. Her anonymous letter asked recipients to illuminate the room, stand still for ten minutes, avoid conversation, and indicate refusal by closing curtains or remaining absent. Only 30-40 percent of invitations produced photographs. Afterward, she mailed participants small prints and requested permission to exhibit the images.
The project was first presented as Dear Stranger at The Approach, London, in 2000, followed by Cohan Leslie and Browne, New York, in 2001. It later appeared in the International Center of Photography's first triennial, Strangers, in 2003 and in exhibitions addressing voyeurism, surveillance, and the architectural window, including Exposed at SFMOMA and The Window in Tokyo and Marugame. Works entered the collections of Nottingham Castle Museum and Art Gallery, the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, and the Tokyo Photographic Art Museum. The 2004 touring exhibition and publication Shizuka Yokomizo: Distance further situated the series within her broader study of presence, solitude, and mediated looking.
