Zoe Strauss

Zoe Strauss
Born	April 1, 1970 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA
Nationality	American
Known for	Photography
Website	www.zoestrauss.com

Zoe Strauss (born 1970) is an American photographer and a nominee member of Magnum Photos. She uses Philadelphia as a primary setting and subject for her work. Curator Peter Barberie identifies her as a street photographer, like Walker Evans or Robert Frank, and has said “the woman and man on the street, yearning to be heard, are the basis of her art.”

Her book America was published in 2008 by AMMO Books.

In 2006 her work was included in the Whitney Biennial and her solo exhibition, Ramp Project: Zoe Strauss, was shown at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia. In 2012 a mid-career retrospective, Zoe Strauss: 10 Years, was shown at Philadelphia Museum of Art and in New York, accompanied in Philadelphia by a display of 54 billboards showing her photographs.

Strauss received a Seedling Award from the Leeway Foundation in 2002 and a Pew Fellowship in 2005, was named a 2007 USA Gund Fellow with a grant of $50,000 by United States Artists, and was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2017.

Strauss was born in 1970 in Philadelphia. Her father died when she was 5. She was the first member of her immediate family to graduate from high school. For her 30th birthday she was given a camera and started photographing 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. Strauss typically photographs overlooked (or purposefully avoided) details with a humanist perspective and eye for composure.

In 1995, Strauss 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 calls the 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 has said.

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