Today: Zoe Strauss Final I-95

click to enlarge, courtesy Zoe Strauss

It's Not Too Far Off: Zoe Strauss I-95

click to see larger -courtesy Zoe Strauss

Zoe Strauss: I-95

courtesy Zoe Strauss

Summer Reading - Group Show at Jen Bekman Gallery

via Jen Bekman

This year our summer group show, Summer Reading, is united around the wonderful world of words. Jen Bekman Gallery will be showing paintings, drawings and photographs from a talented lot, some of whom you already know from their 20x200 editions.

Artists in the exhibition:

Thomas Allen, Kate Bingaman-Burt, Kotama Bouabane, Lizzie Buckmaster-Dove, Christine Callahan, Jorge Colombo, William Crump, Lauren DiCioccio, Nina Katchadourian, Gregory Krum, Steve Lambert, Michael Mandiberg, Carrie Marill, Mike Monteiro, Jane Mount, Kirby Pilcher, Jason Polan, Kent Rogowski, Ed Ruscha,Kelly Shimoda, Victor Schrager, Mickey Smith, Alec Soth, Zoe Strauss, Shaun Sundholm, Brian Ulrich, and Tim Walker.

Jen Bekman Gallery
6 Spring Street
(between Elizabeth + Bowery)
New York, New York 10012

Gallery Hours:
Wednesday – Saturday | Noon – 6pm
On View: July 15th - August 22nd, 2009

Today! Zoe Strauss: I-95

If you are in Philly don't miss this! © Zoe Strauss

1000 Words Photography Magazine #4

1000 Words Photography Magazine issue #4 online now, featuring portfolios from Zoe Strauss, Walter Martin & Paloma Muñoz, Martin Schoeller, Mark Power, Izima Karou, and Alice Myers.

There are also book reviews of:
Welcome to the Garden by Frank Darius
Pitch Blackness by Hank Willis Thomas
The Birthday Party by Vee Speers
The Meadowlands by Joshua Lutz

Studioscopic of Zoe Strauss by David Kessler

Studioscopic: Zoe Strauss from David S Kessler on Vimeo.

Zoe Strauss talks about her work process, the I-95 installation, and her thoughts on why she works in this video by David Kessler. Studioscopic is a series of videos on artists by Kessler.

Today: Get Your Fix of Zoe!

Zoe Strauss
Artist Talk
Saturday, December 13, 2008 - 3 p.m.
Bruce Silverstein Gallery
535 West 24th Street
New York, NY

Artists for ACRIA

via 20x200:

Zoe Strauss, Dana Hoey, Holly Andres, Jill Greenberg, Lisa Kereszi, Mary Ellen Mark, Tina Barney and a whole bunch of other fabulous artists have donated limited edition prints for important AIDS research and treatment education programs. This benefits the AIDS Community Research Initiative of America (ACRIA), a collaborative and independent not-for-profit organization, studies new treatments for HIV/AIDS and related diseases, and conducts a comprehensive HIV health literacy program.

Check out the great selection of prints for a great cause right here.

The New Yorker on Zoe Strauss

Read Eliza Honey's review of Zoe Strauss' work for The New Yorker, here.
And if you are in New York don't forget to see Zoe Strauss' show at Bruce Silverstein Gallery - through January 10, 2009.

AMERICA: We Love Having You Here

Opening tomorrow:

Zoe Strauss: AMERICA: We Love Having You Here
November 22, 2008 – January 10, 2009
Opening: November 22nd, 6 - 8pm

Silverstein Photography
535 West 24th Street
New York, NY 10011
P: 212-627-3930

(from the Silverstein Gallery press release):

Silverstein Photography is pleased to announce Zoe Strauss: AMERICA: We Love Having You Here, an exhibition featuring works from Strauss’ last eight years of photographing throughout the United States including her most recent excursions. Many of the images in the show are also featured in her forthcoming book of the same title.


No image more popularly depicts the artist’s creative process than the famed Hans Namuth portrait of Jackson Pollock at work on his signature drip paintings. The image showing Pollock lunging aggressively toward his canvas with paintbrush in hand revealed to the public for the first time that most private and mysterious of practices: the artist at work. In the years since this image was made, incalculable others of the same subject have appeared, but beside Namuth’s portrait of Pollock, none have more definitively represented the artist amidst their creative process. Despite Namuth’s revelatory portrait, artists’ working practices and the public’s perception thereof have remained clandestine, leaving only their end result in the public’s view and keeping hidden the progression of events out of which the art was created. By maintaining total transparency in her process, her work, and even the production of her exhibitions, Zoe Strauss not only reveals her every musing and tendency, she offers the viewer a deeply personal understanding of her process as an artist - integral to the comprehension of her work.

Strauss’ transparency has been an indispensable element in her method since her first installations built inside her home were opened to the public for viewing in 1997. Shortly thereafter, Strauss began what would become a ten-year project of displaying her works in the area below the I-95 highway in Philadelphia. Like all of her exhibitions, the ‘I-95’ project continues to involve extensive awareness of and communication with her audience. While in production for I-95 and all other projects, Strauss actively maintains a blog which among other things discloses the minutiae of her art-making practices, her choices in subject matter, her editing and printing processes, and most recently, the publishing of her first book, AMERICA (AMMO Books, 2008). By making public the details of an otherwise private practice of producing art and its related projects and events, Strauss asserts her working method as a part of the art being considered, allowing the audience to see the way the work is made as a fundamental component to its understanding.

Strauss’ choice in subject matter reveals much about her life and work as an artist as well. Having gotten her start photographing the same neighborhood in which she lives, Strauss has consistently “shot what she knows” and has maintained an extremely personable approach to her subjects. This steadfast openness has become a defining characteristic of Strauss’ work and has made her a natural candidate for the subject matter on which she continues to focus. From her earliest works on, Strauss has concentrated on the overlooked in America. Whether its overlooked citizens, environments, or the objects therein, Strauss has aimed her lens at those things we cannot or choose not to see. In her latest project, Strauss has taken her camera on the road in an attempt to create an apt portrait of the United States. Driving between various locations throughout the U.S., Strauss has photographed those neglected people and places among us, creating a likeness of this country largely dissimilar to what we think we already know.

Zoe Strauss’ work was included in the 2006 Whitney Biennial and has been exhibited at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Philadelphia Institute of Contemporary Art, the Centraal-Museum of Utrecht, and the Richard E. Peeler Art Center at DePauw University among others. In 2007, Strauss was named a USA Gund Fellow, Visual Arts.

For more information on the exhibition, please contact Elizabeth Shank at elizabeth@brucesilverstein.com.

Zoe Strauss Interviews

Via Liz Kuball's blog I came across this video interview with Zoe Strauss from the Philadelphia Weekly:



And Will Steacy spent election day photographing and talking with Zoe Strauss, and you can find his outstanding interview on Photoeye.

Zoe Strauss' first book, titled America, is available now. Zoe also has a show opening November 22, 2008 at Silverstein Gallery in New York.

Zoe Strauss, Election Day

Head over to Zoe Strauss' blog for some images from election day: www.zoestrauss.blogspot.com

Zoe Strauss Censored!

Find out more via Zoe Strauss' blog: zoestrauss.blogspot.com.

Julia Staples

Zoe Strauss' assistant/intern Julia Staples just started her own blog: www.juliastaples.wordpress.com. The blog currently showcases beautiful work Julia photographed in Iceland (the beach image is one of my favorites). And if you want to see more Iceland images, also check out Rona Chang's work.

Zoe Strauss - New and Selected Work

Photographs New and Selected Work on Exhibition and For Sale by Zoe Strauss

Sunday May 4, 2008 1 pm to 4 pm
Front St. and Mifflin St.
Under 1-95
Philadelphia , PA

Rain or Shine

www.zoestrauss.blogspot.com