Must See: Zoe Strauss "Ten Years" at the PMA

The Philadelphia Museum of Art January 14, 2012 - April 22, 2012

 Zoe Strauss: Ten Years 

Currently on view at the PMA is a complex and moving group of photographs by Zoe Strauss that gives fresh weight and resonance to the 99% zeitgeist. The exhibit focuses on her ten year long  project to shoot and show photographs in a space beneath a section of Interstate-95 (I-95) in South Philadelphia. Strauss’s subjects are broad but her primary focus is on working-class experience, including the most disenfranchised people and places. Her photographs offer a poignant, troubling portrait of contemporary America.

Untrained as a photographer or artist, Strauss founded the Philadelphia Public Art Project in 1995 with the objective of exhibiting art in nontraditional venues. She turned to the camera in 2000 as the most direct instrument to represent her chosen subjects. In 2006, her work was included in the Whitney Biennial, followed by the release of her first book, America, in 2008.