Sitting in the Starbucks at the Penn Bookstore, Théa Kerekes pulls up her photography website and comments on the top photo—of a woman leaning out a window. “This is in Portugal. I don’t know her. She was maybe three or four stories up, and I saw her every morning and every afternoon on my walk to work,” she says. The fourth-year College of Arts and Sciences student from Lower Merion, Pennsylvania adds, “I love the color, I love the angle, I love the repetition with the windows, I love her expression because you can’t really tell what she’s thinking.”
Scrolling through another page, she points out pictures of her brother, mother, father, cousin, and another cousin. Stopping at a black-and-white image of her mother looking into the distance through large sunglasses, Kerekes comments, “I thought she looked so powerful and so elegant, and that’s just how I see my mom.”
Whether taking pictures of strangers on the street in Portugal—where she worked as a tour and tastings guide for the port house Churchill’s Graham, through Penn Abroad’s —or family and friends, Kerekes loves portraiture. Reflecting the interdisciplinary pursuits of Penn students, she sees a connection with her major.
“Sociology taught me to observe and interpret the forces shaping human behavior and societal structures, from cultural norms and group dynamics to social institutions,” says Kerekes. “It’s a field rooted in observation and interpretation, where every interaction and behavior have a reason and context.
“Photography and sociology complement each other: Sociology examines human behavior and societal structures while photography brings these observations into focus, inviting an audience to see, feel, and engage,” she says.
Kerekes, who is minoring in fine arts, says that while photography captures the “what,” sociology examines the “why” of human actions. She has had an opportunity to exhibit her work while at Penn. Her first show, “Ma Joie” or “my joy,” and her mother’s nickname for her, took place in Stuart Weitzman Hall during her second year.
“Théa has consistently demonstrated a unique blend of academic excellence and thoughtful engagement with complex, multidisciplinary challenges, skills that will serve her well as she leaves Penn,” says Matthew Neff, director of the Undergraduate Program in Fine Arts and Design and associate adjunct professor in the Stuart Weitzman School of Design.
Neff, who has advised Kerekes on several independent projects, exhibitions, and a self-published artist book, adds that she “approaches her research and image-making with meticulous attention to detail and a deep-seated curiosity that drives her toward independent research and intellectual exploration.” He adds, “Théa has consistently produced strong visual pieces, informed by technical skills and a nuanced understanding of images’ power and psychological impact, their dissemination, and the impact of curation and contextualization.”
Last year, in the exhibition “Saudade,” Portuguese for “the love that remains,” Kerekes explored the feeling of nostalgic longing for something or someone who is missed. The exhibition in the Charles Addams Fine Arts Gallery included the launch of her self-published book of photography. She donated the book proceeds of $1,000 to Photography Without Borders, a North Philadelphia nonprofit teaching youth how to tell their stories through photography.
“Photography has always been one of my biggest passions,” says Kerekes, “My other one, I would say, is for helping people.”
In the fall of 2020, as a senior in high school, she started a local chapter of Helping the Hungry Virtually, a teen-led nonprofit raising money to donate grocery gift cards to people in need. At Penn, she has been involved in Big Brothers Big Sisters and The Literacy Project, a nonprofit that helps disadvantaged and at-risk second-graders with reading.
Kerekes says she got interested in photography from her uncle, a Paris-based defense attorney by day and photographer outside of work. “He used to ride me around Paris on his bike—I’d sit on the basket in the back, watching him take photos while we explored the city,” she says. “I think those are some of my earliest and happiest memories, both with him and photography. He was always so focused, yet there was a quiet joy—so calm, so completely at ease in those moments.”
Kerekes took her first photography class her freshman year of high school and recalled, “I was horrible. I sucked at it.” But she really liked it. With the encouragement of her teacher, she stuck with it, taking another class the following year.
She came to Penn uncertain of what she wanted to study, but her advisor—Hocine Fetni, assistant dean for academic advising in the College and adjunct professor in the Department of Sociology—recommended sociology. She took Introduction to Sociology and then Fetni’s Law and Society course, saying the latter was the first time she was studying but didn’t feel like she was studying.
“Now when I look at people, especially those I don’t know, I’m a lot more curious about who they are, where they come from, and what their story is,” Kerekes says. Studying sociology has “made me much more curious about the world around me and the different relationships people have with one another. I think that being able to capture little moments from people on the street brings a different narrative to life.”
