A Closer Look: It’s Something

Issue: Summer 2018
“Two Men Under a Flashlight,” inkjet print, 25x40 inches. A photo by Phoebe Mattana Class of 2018.
“Two Men Under a Flashlight,” inkjet print, 25×40 inches, by Phoebe Mattana ’18.

For the senior exhibition It’s Not Nothing at the Williams College Museum of Art, English and studio art major Phoebe Mattana ’18 says she focused on the idea of “the camera as a gun—a tool of oppression in modernist consumerist culture used to sell not only products and services but also a set of cultural ideals.” Her photos make use of products like eggs, jelly, laundry detergent and beer “to draw attention to the body as a consumable object.” Mattana was among the nine senior studio art majors who exhibited their work in May and June.

Photo of Phoebe Mattana in her studio.
Phoebe Mattana, in her studio, photographed by Hudson Bohr ’18