Zoe Strauss

With little formal training as a photographer or artist, Zoe Strauss (b. 1970) founded the Philadelphia Public Art Project in 1995 with the aim of exhibiting art in nontraditional venues. Five years later, she began using photography as the most direct means of representing her chosen subjects. "Zoe Strauss: 10 Years" offers a midcareer assessment of Strauss' achievement to date, and the first full account of her celebrated ten-year project, beginning in 2001, to exhibit her photographs under an elevated section of Interstate 95 in Philadelphia. Strauss' troubling and sometimes touching images focus primarily on American working-class experience, to convey what she calls "an epic narrative that reflects the beauty and struggle of everyday life". Generously illustrated, this book will publish nearly 200 photographs - 135 of them for the first time - along with images that document her I-95 exhibitions. With critical essays by curator Peter Barberie and photography historian Sally Stein, plus a bibliography and chronology, this definitive publication is the first to be produced about this important young artist.