Friday, July 20, 2001 | 9:09 a.m.
Since 1997 Beth Yarnelle Edwards has been probing people's personal spaces, looking for clues about their lives and for the meaning of American society.
What has transpired is a collection of intimate color photographs that delve into the world of middle-class families living, working and playing in California suburbs.
Set in their bedrooms, living rooms, kitchens and backyards, the photographs focus on the material aspects of the American-suburban culture, as well as the personal aspect.
It's "my attempt to understand the world around me," said the 50-year-old Edwards, a San Carlos, Calif., resident who is hoping that "Suburban Dreams" -- on display through Sept. 11 at Reed Whipple Cultural Center -- will inspire people to "consider the way we live, to think about it, to talk about it."
Ranging from blue-collar families to more the more affluent middle class, Edwards describes the collection as "individuality and eccentricity within a common theme."
Most of the photographs were taken in the suburbs of the San Francisco Bay Area, suburbs which Edwards describes as being for many "a physical embodiment of the American dream, a place where natural beauty, material comfort and relative safety intersect with economic opportunities in high-tech industry."
There is "Erin," the photo of a dark-haired 11-year-old girl wearing pajamas and eating a red-and-white candy cane in a messy bed at 9:40 in the morning.
Chords from her video game's hand-held controls dangle from a TV mounted onto the wall above her custom-made bed, which is wedged into the small but completely accessorized room. A rainbow collection of Troll dolls are stuffed onto a nearby shelf.
Tacked to the walls behind her are clipped-out company logos from shopping bags, an empty Hershey's Kisses candy bag and an empty Wendy's restaurant's Biggie Fries carton.
The tidbits of American commercialism are there for no other reason, except that a friend of hers had done the same, Edwards said.
What is most interesting about the photograph taken a couple of years ago is the unenthralled, but not completely bored, look of an 11-year-old with nothing too pressing on her morning agenda.
Another photo, titled "Art and Carol," features a seemingly affluent older couple in monogrammed robes sharing breakfast together, each with a splash of vitamins on their placemats. They are seated at at the kitchen counter of their pristine, glowing-white contemporary kitchen.
Other photos include families eating dinner, a trio of teenage-to-young adult women prepping for their evening out on the town, a cozy, darkened and cluttered family room where a family watches "The Simpsons," and "The Morning Dash"-- a busy family heading out the front door on a sunny morning.
There are 60 photographs in all, but only a percentage are on display at Reed Whipple Cultural Center Gallery. The series is an ongoing project, Edwards said.
A handful of the photographs have been featured in Harper's, the New Yorker and New York Times Magazine, and are in the permanent collections of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art as well as temporary exhibits throughout the Unites States and Europe.
Edwards said that Europeans are particularly drawn to her work. Mainly, "They're fascinated by the way we live."
In one write-up, a French critic saw a lot of alienated silences, people trapped in their own dreams and aspirations.
Other Americans are so familiar with the setting that they're literally sure they know someone in the photographs. Everyone brings their own feelings to the exhibit, she said.
To Edwards, the collection shows "that we're a culture that has a lot of stuff and not enough time. And we're really into technology.
"It's an amazing amount of stuff," Edwards said. "And there's a lot of pressure. This is a hard place to live. It's very expensive ... jobs come and go."
But, she added, "There's a lot of opportunity."
Edwards grew up in Los Angeles' San Fernando Valley as it was becoming a suburb. She has degrees in teaching English as a Second Language and English as a Foreign Language, fine arts in photography and psychology.
She was in early 40s when she first took an interest in photography, a move that came about when she quit teaching English at a university and decided to write about culture. It was an interest she held since temporarily attending college in Mexico when she was 19.
Edwards had decided she needed to take photographs to accompany the writings, so she enrolled in photography courses at a community college before she returned to graduate school to gain her second masters degree (in fine arts).
Because she had never thought of herself as an artist or visual person, Edwards said she was inspired by no particular photographer, but has had interest in European narrative paintings, genre scenes of the middle class. "Of the bourgeoise for the bourgeoise," she said.
Using hot lights and posed subjects, the color photographs are staged, but based on the people's lives, she said.
The photographs are of friends, friends of the family, relatives and neighbors, many whom are referrals from others who have been photographed.
"At first, you're under pressure, (thinking) 'What am I going to find here,' " she said about her first meetings with her subjects. "(But), you always find something.
"How people live has always been interesting to me."
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