Lisa Kereszi (American, b. 1973)
Eye on Door, Spook-A-Rama, Coney Island, Pennsylvania, 2007
30 x 40 in
Archival pigment print
Gift of John Andrew MacMahon, Class of 1995
Lisa Kereszi’s Eye on Door, Spook-A-Rama, Coney Island, Pennsylvania is an everyday-eerie look at the reality of the escapist fantasy of haunted houses. The photograph depicts green double doors at the entrance, though only the front of one of the two doors is visible. The doors appear halfway open, haphazard, like something happened—something scary, unexpected, or unknown—and there was no time to close up. On the front of the door is a stylized, wide-eyed green eye on a vibrant emerald background with a mint green border surrounding it. The work is an oversaturation of greens. The eye stares directly into the camera, scared yet confident: pulling you in and freaking you out. Kereszi took the photograph in daylight, revealing the faded paint and dusty floors that darkness would conceal.
Eye on Door, Spook-A-Rama, Coney Island, Pennsylvania is a part of Kereszi’s series Haunted, where she captures the nature of haunted houses across the United States, an act which she describes as “sneaking around those places we go to be safely scared.” [1] In this series, according to the Huffington Post, “the fears we hold dear are stripped of their power when their seams and backsides are revealed.” [2] The doors are overwhelmingly ordinary, but they are also a threshold, a portal, and an entrance to a nowhere that will, by night, become a haunted house again.
Kereszi graduated from Bard College with a Bachelor of Arts in photography and a minor in literature/creative writing in 1995. In 2000, she received a Master of Fine Arts degree from the Yale University School of Art. She has been on the faculty there as a Lecturer since 2004, and also serves as Acting Director of Undergraduate Studies in Photography. Kereszi was appointed Director of Undergraduate Studies in Art in 2013 and Senior Critic in 2019. Her work is in many private collections, including that of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, New Museum of Contemporary Art, Brooklyn Museum of Art, J. Paul Getty Museum, Museum of Fine Arts Houston, Norton Museum of Art and the Yale University Art Gallery, among others. Kereszi’s editorial work has appeared in many books and magazines, including The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, Nest, New York, The London Telegraph Sunday Magazine, Details, GQ, Black Book, Jane, Newsweek, House & Garden, Penthouse, Nylon, zingmagazine, Flaunt, and others.
Eye on Door, Spook-A-Rama, Coney Island, Pennsylvania is currently on view on the first floor of Chambers Academic Building.
[2] Artist Spotlight: Exposing The Fantasy, Lisa Kereszi’s “Haunted”
– Isabel Smith ’24