Zoe Strauss

Iraq War Vet Killed in North Philly

I'm back from Las Vegas. I didn't make any great photos at all during this trip. Actually, I only made one or 2 good photos and that's stretching it. Regardless, I saw many amazing things including a corpse by the side of the road in the desert. I went back after the police had gone to see how they had marked it, but there were no markings, they had just removed the body. Here's where the body had lain.



I also saw my friends Art and Diane, who I love. I met them once before when I knocked on their trailer door in the middle of the desert a year and a half ago. Everything was the same when I saw them this time and when I left Diane said, "It was a good day when we heard someone knocking and it was you." Diane, I love you. And I love you too, Art.


more later

Art's loaded .45 revolver

Photography is a construct, not an absolute, but because of the way photographic images are made people are prone to reading representational photos as "truth." Which is, of course, completely untrue. Even when a moment is recorded with complete accuracy and journalistic intent, a raw image allows a spectrum of possible truths.

For such an accessible and simple medium, there is endless complexity involved in the image making and image reading.

Why am I doing this? Because I've needed to update my website for about 200 years, especially the "press" section since several people have asked for a recent bibliography. Ergo, I'm just putting it here so that people who have asked me for it can get it and I can just keep putting off the website update. Enjoy!



June 4, 2003, Philadelphia City Paper Highway to Art by A.D. Amorosi

April 30th, 2004 Taking images of the streets back to their birthplace
by Edward J. Sozanski
Click Below



May 2, 2004
Exhibit provides a new meaning for 'outsider art'
Zoe Strauss brought her work to the masses with a display under a S. Phila. expressway.
by Adam Fifield
Click Below



April 20, 2005, Philadelphia Weekly Candid Camera by Roberta Fallon


May 2005
WHYY interview
with Joel Rose

December 15 2005
Philadelphia City Paper
Public Worker by A.D. Amorosi


Feb. 15, 2006 Philadelphia Inquirer Self-educated photographer wins acclaim: Suddenly, her images clicked. By Karen Heller


3/2/2006 Village Voice BIENNIAL IN BABYLON by Jerry Saltz


3/12/2006 Philadelphia Inquirer A noisy biennial at the Whitney By Edward J. Sozanski


3/29/2006 Philadelphia Weekly Just Whitney: Philadelphia artist Zoe Strauss' Biennial 2006 submission steals the show. by Roberta Fallon

3/2006 Cover Photo of A Public Space Literary Magazine
Issue 1

March/April 2006 New York PBS, Thirteen/WNET, New York Voices Whitney Biennial: Contemporary arts museum spotlights emerging artists." Produced by Suzanne Glickstein

April 2006, Cover Photo of The New York Art World

4/8/2006 UK Telegraph Art gets ready for the end of the world by Richard Dorment

5/11/2006 World Socialist Web Site A barometer of the American cultural zeitgeist: the Whitney Biennial 2006 By Clare Hurley



6/2/2006 World Socialist Web SiteInterview with Zoe Strauss, photographer in the Whitney Biennial 2006: Day for Night By Clare Hurley



June 2 2006 Philadelphia Weekly Ode de Cologne: German spaces collide with Philly faces at the ICA. by Roberta Fallon


6/2006 Tips on the Hottest Events ICA Ramp Project: Zoe Strauss By: Aroundphilly.com Staff


June 2006, Ducts: Summer 2006 Interview by Christina Vassallo

What better way to celebrate my people's New Year than to ring it in with a studio taping of my makeover with Isaac Mizrahi. Sept 22, at 5:30, as the old year goes out, the new year comes in with me getting "Butchtastic" and "Glamourfied" and presenting it to a live studio audience.
Yes!

While watching "When The Levees Broke" our television froze right as Barbara Bush was about to say

"Almost everyone I've talked to says, 'We're going to move to Houston.' What I'm hearing, which is sort of scary, is they all want to stay in Texas. Everyone is so overwhelmed by the hospitality.

And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this, this is working very well for them."



Lynn had never seen the actual video of it and we have DVR so we tried to rewind it to the place where it froze but we were unable to see it. The rewind stopped before we could get back to the clip of her. I called my mom to ask if she was able to see it but her TV had frozen at the same time. Actually, when I called her she answered the phone "Bush Matrix" so I knew her TV had also frozen at that part.

I searched for that video clip and couldn't find it anywhere.

Here's the radio clip and article.

NY Times

When The Levees Broke is highly recommended viewing.

This is where one of the many ICA images went.

Ok, here's what's going on for

ZOE STRAUSS NIGHT AT THE WHITNEY
(also referred to as "Initial Public Offering: Zoe Strauss" by my Whitney friends)

On September 15th

the program begins at 7pm


It's first come first serve for people to get the FREE photos I have made especially for this event. FREE! There are 200 different color photocopies that I've made for IPO and I would highly encourage trading. Hopefully 200 people will come and I'll be able to give them all out.

Zoe Strauss night kicks off with a trailer for the documentary (working title) "If You Break the Skin" that was made this summer.

Then an informal panel discussion...here's who's on the panel so far- Elyse Gonzales, Peter Barberie, Danielle Jackson and there might be one more. It's a Q and A so get ready with questions, friends.
Do you have a burning question to ask any of them? Email it to me at info@zoestrauss.com.
This panel discussion won't be super long, probably around half an hour to 45 minutes.

Then I'm showing 4 revised slide shows and 1 brand new slide show, all with music. Each slide show will be between 3-5 minutes.

Then it's milling about with amazingly good times for all. There will a silent looped projection of photos showing. And there will be polaroids taken and quite a bit of posing.


Please click here to reserve tickets. The event is pay as you wish but you should reserve to get a seat and insure a place downstairs.




Village Voice Arts Education Supplement Fall 2006
Scroll down to the "Photo" section


I will add more to this as it shapes all the way up.

Right now I am keeping all of these photos, but I'm not printing them yet. I will have to whittle it down to one of these for the slide shows or 95. They will all be saved as .tif files so I can print them anytime.

After minimal color correction it's

Dawn 6 Cropped

or
Dawn 6 Full

or
Dawn 5 Cropped

or
Dawn 5 Full



And then

Dawn 4 Cropped

or
Dawn 4 Full

or
Dawn 3 Full


Then


Then
Dawn 2 Cropped

or
Dawn 2 Full



of all of the photos I am leaning toward these

Zoe Strauss Night at the Whitney is going to be fucking AMAZING. If you don't go you better be dead or in jail and if you're in jail BREAKOUT!

This is going to be super hot.

Wednesday, September 6 -
Panel Discussion at 6pm with Reception following from 7:30-9pm. Powel House Museum, 244 South 3rd Street, Philadelphia. Free and open to the public(but reservations encouraged by September 2nd to rmott@philagrafika.org)


Philagrafika will host a free public panel discussion which will examine the way the medium of print is ideally suited to communicate issues of history, social class and the urban environment to contemporary audiences. The discussion will include the artists Murphy and Smyrski and they will be joined by: Alex Baker, Ph.D., Curator of Contemporary Art at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts; Historian and author George W. Boudreau, Ph.D.; Shelley Langdale, Associate Curator of Prints and Drawings, Philadelphia Museum of Art; Artist and author Steven Powers, aka Espo; Photographer and Whitney Biennial participant Zoe Strauss.



About Megawords-
Megawords Magazine is an ongoing, collaborative artistic investigation by Dan Murphy and Anthony Smyrski. Through their artwork, they address issues of community and document people surviving in cities all over the world.

Thanks, Amber Dorko Stopper.

I recieve an enormous amount of junk mail, and I have come to love some of it.

Subject Lines


Your money, open-market
Better Future, well-inferred
Better Future, well-called
Your money, open-armedly
Your money, noble-looking
Better Life, wrong-principled
Your money, old-maidish
Better Future, wood star
Your money, moss-grown
Better Life, yellow-dyed
Better Success, winter blight
Better Success, white-topped
Your health, ocean-wide
Better Success, world-destroying
Your health, mist-laden
Better Life, whole-hog
Your money, open-armedly
Your cash, night singer


Reagan Poseidon



Text included in body of emails...


paws holding glasses, thundering laughter, and open jaws filled with yellow
heard of the Currigan Labs? There's this little private supplier.. . So they

"Well, I guessed! I don't remember exactly what gave me the clue. Well,
wrinkled up. He was afraid of pain, was he? Shove you and your pain! He

bed by the window. Guta woke up, too, and took Redrick's hand. He could feel
to take somebody with you. I can give you one of my people who's

"If we get some water," Arthur said. "At least wash our faces.
He fell face down into the grass, and it turned into dust under his

or sky, proverb though I could
legal procedure the night,
and ran on terrible for another two hundred yards--when

As is the gardener, so is the garden It will all come right in the wash Patience is bitter, but it bears sweet fruit

Let’s make our ejaculation like steel

weakly. We got through. We got through even this. And now, accounts payable
She appeared noiselessly at the table by the old man. She stood there

give them 37 sec and that's it to begin.
It was fab enduringly having someone to benefit me out.
I apologize I have been so late with it. Sorry for the long time again

effectively low in the scale of humanity,
There seemed jaw no one mosquito to dispute his claims when
for I therefore saw him rise

The above title links to a great article by Steven Heller about the terrible typeface the white house has been using on their materials.


In a comment replying to Steven Heller's article Leila Singleton offers up this,

"it COULD be theorized that the person setting (The White House's) type is actually a brilliant designer who has decided that this atrocious design aesthetic is PERFECTLY suited to such trite, empty phrases as "A Brighter Future for America," "Mission Accomplished," and "Strategy for Victory." In this way, the type treatment becomes a commentary where form reflects content, assaulting the retina to underscore the phrases' lack of substance!"

I completely agree.

But what marks this newfound use of the empty written statements as different than the ridiculous spoken statements is the idea that the spoken words aren't enough, that we need a visible, written soundbyte in the frame to insure that regardless of what's being said the written statement is the "bottom line."





For example, without knowing what Bush is saying in this photo, he's positioned to show that he's providing a concrete solution to the perceived problem of open borders with "Protecting America's Borders." When this photo is seen, the message is complete. The speech could be "Kill em all and let God sort em out," but the photo speaks with a different force and eliminates the "how" with the finality of the statement "Protecting America's Borders."

The photos that have been made of our political leaders haven't needed this much propping up with hollow statements ever, even that imbecile Reagan!

I believe that this is a calculated PR move, the inclusion of signage specific to the "message." And don't I believe it's possible that the use of abysmal graphic design and horrible typography is just because of a bad art director. I can't help but wonder if it's part of the continuing ploy to portrait the Bush administration as just "folks." My guess is that if push came to shove, the White House could probably get better signage than picking up the special at "Fast Signs."

The idea of looking at the graphic design of the White House seems trivial in so many ways when there are hundreds of other things that need to be looked at and tended to but I see this a part of a bigger issue of presentation of power and methods of swaying opinion and idea through presentation and reproduction of images. Typeface and fonts matter. And graphic design matters. And symbols matter. And to indicate that these things don't matter by using 1996 Print Shop for the President of the United States seems calculated to me. But maybe I'm completely wrong and it's just not important to the Bush administration and that's also disturbing, because these are the statements that the current administration wants the world to see. Christ, you just can't catch a break with them!


The most famous of the Bush administration's vinyl signs.

On NBC's Meet the Press, Feb. 8, 2004 George Bush said,


thanks to Momus for the link.

Pictured from top to bottom...
Charday
David
Diane
Daliyl
Esther
Joanna
Tameme
Misha
Mollie
Phylicia
Tom
Tracy


to all you guys who worked on and continue to work on the Zoe Strauss Documentary.
and also thanks to Johanna Plummer, not pictured

My grandfather Howard Faux is running for TREASURER OF IDAHO! To quote the soon to be first lady of Idaho's treasury, my grandmother Mary Faux, "The Democrats will rise again!" And I am certain that the Democrats will kick off their meteoric rise beginning with Howard Faux's sweep into office.

Howard Faux for Treasurer!

Several pieces from the ICA show are now up and for sale at the Bean Cafe on South St. I made some duplicates so I could experiment with taking them down and nailing them up outside...and they are there for sale at 40 bucks a pop. Also, these photos are mounted on wood and are the frontrunners for figuring out the adhesive. If the photos have any bubbling or bucking, just pull them off and remount them OR just peel them off of the wood...they're laminated on both sides so no worries with the pulling off.



Bean Cafe
615 South St.



Also, if you have taken any of the recently placed photos from the telephone poles at 10th and Reed, please let me know which one you took and when. The first round that went up at 10th and Reed had a few hanging around for about or 3 or 4 days, but the second round of only 2 photos went within a day.

Or does it actually seem like armageddon?

Hey, can anyone help me with my resume? I have no idea what the fuck I'm doing. Please! Someone help me!

Because, honestly, this is amazingly great. I wish so much thet my grandparents were alive to see this because I believe that "Best in Philly" might be the pinnacle of achievements in their eyes. I have saved many copies of Philadelphia magazine that they had stored in their basement. As a kid, I would often reread them sitting on the cool basement floor. My mother was the subscriber to Philadelphia magazine and my grandparents were the savers. I have a copy of a 1980 issue with Gia on the cover and an amazing 70's issue with a bold cover story question on the cover, "Is Philadelphia Going Black?".

Lynn's grandmother moved out of her house a few months ago and when LB and her fam were starting the cleanout, I asked for two 1976 Philadelphia magazines if no one else wanted them. Jesus H. Christ, there's a book review by Kiki Olsen before she was Kiki Olsen-Gomez! And the ads kill me. Kill me! I'm going say there's probably not a lot of other people in the world who force their partners to look at a Rusty Scupper ad and then tell a long story about Newmarket. But, dudes, if you're over 35 and from Philadelphia, I know you feel me!

Reggie White, former Eagle, was posthumously inducted into the NFL hall of fame this weekend. I have heard many commentators talking about what a great, great man Reggie White was. Well, as a lesbian and an Eagles fan, I let me tell you that I think Reggie White was a fucking imbecile. Here's some of his more insane quotes....



"When you look at the black race, black people are very gifted in what we call worship and celebration. A lot of us like to dance, and if you go to black churches, you see people jumping up and down, because they really get into it. White people were blessed with the gift of structure and organization. You guys do a good job of building businesses and things of that nature and you know how to tap into money pretty much better than a lot of people do around the world. Hispanics are gifted in family structure. You can see a Hispanic person and they can put 20 or 30 people in one home. They were gifted in the family structure. When you look at the Asians, the Asian is very gifted in creation, creativity and inventions. If you go to Japan or any Asian country, they can turn a television into a watch. They're very creative. And you look at the Indians, they have been very gifted in the spirituality."


"As America has permitted homosexuality to establish itself as an alternative lifestyle, it is also reeling from the frightening spread of sexually transmitted disease. Sin begets its own consequence, both on individuals and nations. "



"Let me explain something when I'm talking about sin, and I'm talking about all sin. One of the biggest ones (sins) that has been talked about that has really become a debate in America is homosexuality. "

and how bout this...

PEGGY WEHMEYER of ABC's 20/20: "Just last week, Reggie White and his wife, Sara, met us for an exclusive interview. White told us he was sorry if he offended anyone, but he wasn’t backing down one inch. (on camera) Are you saying there that homosexuals are like liars, cheaters, backstabbers and malicious people?"

REGGIE WHITE "Yes." - ABC's 20/20, April 27, 1998.

Dude was a fucking dick. When he left here he said something like, "God told me to go to Green Bay."

Hello? I don't really think it's going out on a limb to say that perhaps they should tone down the "greatest man who ever lived" rhetoric.

It's not because I'm getting any orders, it's that I'm 4 months behind on the OLD color copy orders and who even knows what with the print orders. I know I can everything cleaned up and sent out before the Whitney thing and the Oct. slide shows but I have to produce new work for those, so I know that any new orders will be at least 3 months until the order is gotten.
Thanks for your patience.

The director of the documentary that I'm a part of is an amazing guy. That's Mr. David Kessler. He's a smart guy, with a really good eye and great work. This particular project is extraordinarily difficult to navigate. There are many, many logistical issues because so many people are involved and we all are coming at it from different angles. I am included in this and I am perhaps one the more difficult people to work with.

Not to mention that making sense out of 7 foster kids making a documentary about me and then translating that into a cohesive film is a challenge that is nicely put as "daunting."

One of the first times I met David, he showed me something he had been working on. It was a milky translucent rubber baby bird that he had cast and produced. It was hollow and there were several different warm colored threads inside the bird, giving the feeling of looking through the thin skin into the still forming internal organs. And when I held the piece the tactile sensation was intense, I didn't want to put it down.

Anyway, I really liked the idea and I really liked the execution and I've thought of the birds several time during the course of the documentary stuff. They're very evocative and I probably should have seen right then that David's cast rubber would foreshadow this whole project.


Two Birds in a Bowl in Clear Rubber
David Kessler


Enough about that! Celebrate Mr. Kessler's obsession with his hometown's pride and joy... Union, New Jersey's "World's Tallest Water Sphere!"


Painting by David Kessler

MOSTLY TRUE

Adapted
Began
Combined
Composed
Communicated
Conceptualized
Condensed
Created
Customized
Debated
Designed
Developed
Directed
Displayed
Drew
Edited
Elicited
Enlisted
Established
Explained
Expressed
Fashioned
Formulated
Founded
Illustrated
Initiated
Instituted
Integrated
Introduced
Invented
Modeled
Modified
Originated
Photographed
Planned
Revised
Revitalized
Shaped
Solved
Wrote


MOSTLY UNTRUE

Administered
Appointed
Assigned
Attained
Authorized
Chaired
Consolidated
Contracted
Controlled
Converted
Coordinated
Delegated
Directed
Eliminated
Enforced
Enhanced
Established
Executed
Headed
Hired
Incorporated
Led
Managed
Merged
Motivated
Navigated
Organized
Overhauled
Presided
Prioritized
Recommended
Reorganized
Restored
Reviewed
Scheduled
Secured
Supervised
Terminated