Zoe Strauss

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Zoe Strauss (born 1970) is an American photographer.

Born in Philadelphia, Strauss was given a camera for her 30th birthday and started taking pictures of life in the city’s marginal neighborhoods. She is a photo-based installation artist who uses Philadelphia as a primary setting and subject for her work. Out in the streets, Strauss typically photographs whatever strikes her interest, paying particular attention to the overlooked (or purposefully avoided) details of life.

In 1995, she started the Philadelphia Public Art Project, a one-woman organization whose mission is to give the citizens of Philadelphia access to art in their everyday lives. Strauss’s photographic work culminates in a yearly “Under I-95” show, which takes place beneath the Interstate highway in South Philadelphia. She displays her photographs on concrete pillars under the highway and sells photocopied prints of her work for $5 each. Strauss now calls the Philadelphia Public Art Project an “epic narrative” of her own neighborhood. “When I started shooting, it was as if somewhere hidden in my head I had been waiting for this,” she says.

In 2002 she received a Seedling Award in photography from the Leeway Foundation. In 2005 she received a Pew Fellowship and in 2006 was included in the Whitney Biennial and had a one woman exhibition, Ramp Project: Zoe Strauss at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia.

Strauss’s photos of shuttered buildings, empty parking lots and vacant meeting halls illuminate her South Philly neighborhood’s grim character. Her intimate portraits capture the dignified resignation of its residents. “The juxtaposition of the difficulty of getting by with seeing the everyday beauty of things we have in our lives is what I’m interested in,” Strauss says.