Zoe Strauss: Ten Years Art Exhibit

Ten Years is a mid-career retrospective of the acclaimed photographer’s work and the first critical assessment of her 10-year project to exhibit her photographs annually 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.
Strauss (American, born 1970) states that… Show more her ambition is “to create an epic narrative that reflects the beauty and struggle of everyday life.” Zoe Strauss: Ten Years will offer one version of that narrative, presenting approximately 150 of her photographs, along with slideshows displaying more of her imagery, and installations on billboards throughout Philadelphia that will extend the exhibition beyond the Museum. Between 2001 and 2010, Strauss hosted yearly day-long exhibitions of her photographs under an elevated section of I-95. She affixed prints to columns in an area roughly the size of a football field, providing visitors with a map keyed to a list of photograph titles. Prints of the exhibited images were available for sale for $5, with Strauss stationed at a nearby table to sign them. These installations animated the site with art, commerce and social interaction, transforming it into a vibrant public space. Zoe Strauss: Ten Years will examine how, for Strauss, the opposite settings of the abandoned urban zone under I-95 and the galleries of the Philadelphia Museum of Art complement each other. Her engagement with both places is deep and she highly values the Museum as a place for civic discourse, just as she strove to make the space under I-95 a place for social interaction.

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