As family weekend approaches and you remember just how many of your usual weekend activities are not quite parent-friendly, it may be time to take stock of Penn’s cultural offerings including the Charles Addams Gallery’s current show, Through You: Photography Selections from the Martin Z. Margulies Collection. As exhibitions coordinator Pernot Hudson put it, Through You is “the power behind a museum show given to students.” Senior BFA and second-year MFA photography students were asked to list their top five favorite photographers from Wharton alum Martin Margulies’s prodigious personal collection. The chosen works shape an exhibition that spans the past sixty of years of photography, featuring older pieces that have been rarely exhibited alongside modern classics. It’s a veritable “who’s who of contemporary photography,” said Hudson.
Two works by Shizuka Yokomizo are standouts of the exhibition. Stranger (4) and Stranger (14) are straightforward enough; each photograph looks through a window at a single person standing in a room looking back at the camera. But the process was far from simple. Yokomizo sent letters to strangers asking to photograph him or her and, given their approval, instructing them to stand in their front rooms at a designated time with all the lights on. She would then take the pictures and promptly leave, purposefully keeping her subjects at an uncharacteristic distance. The photos are surprising, honest glimpses into the lives of these strangers. Small details like a child’s crib reveal so much about the subjects. Other gems in the exhibition capture a transvestite’s birthday party, new and unusual ways of wearing sweaters and a larger-than-life image of Goya’s Saturn Devouring One of His Sons remade entirely out of junk. In Hudson’s opinion, “It’s one of the most impressive shows that has come to the Addams Gallery in many, many years.” Through You closes tomorrow, so see it while you still have the chance.
