Art Trek: The Oakland Museum

Erin, 1997, Beth Yarnelle Edwards

What a messy room and why does she have so much stuff?  Are those troll dolls lined up on a shelf?   Is she eating a candy cane or brushing her teeth?  Does she ever get out of bed?

It's so tempting to judge the people in the photos by Beth Yarnelle Edwards, who visited middle class people in Silicon Valley and came up with these lavishly detailed, staged photos after interviewing them about their lives.

On Saturday, my friend Lin and I went to see, "Suburban Dreams," an exhibit of 22 photographs at the Oakland Museum, on show through  June 30.

Edwards is a voyeur, she admits, and we become voyeurs right along with her. But I found myself backing off from judging the clutter or sterility of the settings, and instead  simply studying them as interior landscapes. (And wondering what she'd make of me in my home.  Never let her in the house, I resolved.)
 
Here's another photo, one of Edwards's father and stepmother in their kitchen:

Art and Carol, 1997, Beth Yarnelle Edwards

Why is their kitchen so tidy?  What is that look they're sharing?  What does the photographer think?  But, no,  it's just an older couple with a batch of pills on each placemat, having a routine breakfast.  Edwards isn't exposing pathology, the way Diane Arbus did, or suburban angst, the way Bill Owens did.   She's curious in a much more benign way.

After that, Lin and I lunch at the museum cafe, where we could watch carp circling in the pond.  On the way home, we stopped at Bittersweet on College Avenue for what has to be the best hot chocolate in the world.  I lost my sanity just down the street at Maison d'Etre and bought this beautiful (pricey)  bowl:

What would Edwards make of this?