Meet the Strangers

Shizuka Yokomizo attempts to capture the personal worlds of those unknown to her, through a series of planned chance encounters.

- Shizuka Yokomizo

What happens when a voyeur announces intent? When connections are formed through disconnect. When strangers acknowledge each other’s presence, but continue to remain strangers. When you know that you are being looked at, but aren’t quite sure, by whom. Shizuka Yokomizo’s photographs are a bundle of contradictions, explorations on seeing and being seen, in an effort that tries to redefine the portrait and the idea of the chance encounter.

Having newly shifted, in a city full of strangers, Yokomizo felt a strange sense of detachment to the world around her. Yet, she found herself comforted by other worlds around her, the windows through which she peered, those that offered her an insight into others’ private spaces.

But Yokomizo did not want to be a voyeur. “While I wanted to make images of people who unknowingly open their homes to a stranger, I realised that my attempts were rather frivolous, if they didn’t realise my existence,” she says. “And yet,” she says, “I wanted to remain a stranger.”