cover image Zoe Strauss: 10 Years

Zoe Strauss: 10 Years

Peter Barberie, Sally Stein, and Zoe Strauss. Philadelphia Museum of Art, with Yale Univ., $55 (270p) ISBN 978-0-300-17977-4

The companion piece to a retrospective at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, this examination of Strauss's midcareer photography includes illuminating essays by curator Peter Barberie, Professor Sally Stein, and the artist herself. Each year, between 2001 and 2010, Strauss%E2%80%94a self-taught, Philadelphia-based photographer%E2%80%94would install her work outdoors under a stretch of Highway I-95, giving away the prints at the end of each show. To the degree that these installations reclaimed public space and, in Barberie's words, "co-opted some of the most salient elements of traditional museum exhibitions for representation within the city fabric," the pieces themselves further the practice of socially conscious documentary photography. Strauss focuses her lens alternately on the marginalized and poor, as well as "American boom-and-bust landscapes," writes Barberie. Her portraits, like those of "Cynthia" and "Lurch," are gripping in that they neither glamorize nor belittle their unique subjects. The thread of social commentary and criticism that runs through much of the work is particularly tangible in pieces like "If You Reading This," in which the words "IF YOU READING THIS, FUCK YOU," painted on a run-down wall in Philadelphia, both invite and repel the viewer. Although her photography is now being taken seriously by the fine art establishment, Strauss emphasizes that it is "imperative%E2%80%A6that all imagery be as accessible as possible," and that her camera be a tool of inclusion. Photos. (Jan.)