Zoe Strauss

Since Kate Ware (via Ted Newbold, via Helen Cunningham) facilitated the first purchase of my photographs for the Philadelphia Museum of Art, I have been in a constant state of suspended disbelief in relation to how my work has been received. It was about 5 years ago when the PMA acquired those photos and it hasn't stopped since. I have great confidence in my vision, my mission and my work but can I believe what's happened in terms of accolades? I don't know. I haven't given my self time for lengthy reflection about how my work is perceived on a wide scale. I'm just moving forward with 95 and I can have time to celebrate and cerebrate when I'm 40 and I-95 is over.

(I learned later to call the Philadelphia Museum of Art the "PMA" and not the "art museum." But my provincial ways have never allowed me to let go of the real name, the direct name, "the art museum")

And now I'm friends with Kate Ware! Actual friends!

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From Seinfeld, "The Glasses," 1993


"UNCLE LEO: I'm supposed to tape this nature show for him (Jeffery), he loves nature. Botany, zoology. You know his botany teacher from college stays in close touch with him? They became friends!

JERRY: Oh really?

UNCLE LEO: That's pretty rare! I mean, actual friends! Like equals! They have dinner together, they have discussings..."

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This portrait is a possible contender.



This portrait is not.

Coming October 2008-
by Zoe Strauss

Dorothea Lange. The Road West, New Mexico. 1938. Gelatin silver print, 9 5/8 x 13 1/16




Screen capture from 1952 Chevrolet television commercial
"See the USA in Your Chevrolet - Dinah Shore"


Aside- I love Dinah Shore, one of our many famous Southern Jews. M-wah!

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The rapid change in American travel culture is mindblowing. We're reinventing industry and consumerism as the US shifts labor and production to far from the source of product use. And we're forced to respond to a reconstruction of travel knowing fossil fuels must be phased out. Dudes, you know the culture of the great American expanse and travel is changing way faster than Nixon's mandated 55 MPH.

Michael MacFeat

Reception: Friday, January 25, 4-6 p.m.

January 22 – February 29

Don't miss it.


Michael MacFeat Concealed Weapon (Die Welt), 2000, brick and newspaper.

Vincent.


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Class tomorrow. Thursday or Friday will be a report.

I meet many people, and with the exception one guy in Las Vegas, everyone everywhere thinks George Bush is the biggest asshole ever born.

Monday, January 28
6-7:30 p.m

at Samuel S. Fleisher Art Memorial
719 Catharine Street
Philadelphia, PA

Creative Capital Foundation is a national nonprofit organization that supports artists pursuing adventurous and imaginative work in the performing and visual arts, film/video, innovative literature, and emerging fields. In 2008, Creative Capital will be considering proposals in the performing arts, innovative literature, and emerging fields.* Far from a traditional funder, Creative Capital is committed to working in long-term partnership with the bold and groundbreaking artists that we fund by making a multi-year financial commitment as well as providing advisory services and professional development assistance. We have a special interest in projects that transcend discipline boundaries and reveal something new about the moment in which we live. For more information, please visit www.creative-capital.org.

Without a doubt, Philadelphia is the greatest city in the world. Unfortunately, if you're flying into the greatest city in world you are flying into the hot mess we call the airport. Philadelphia greet visitors to our great city, and residents eager to get home, in a grotesque manner. It genuinely pains me to write this post.

Recently I had flown back home and after getting off the plane there was no one to tell the passengers what carousel our luggage would be on. So we all just followed signs to "Baggage Claim" and when we got there no one was there to tell us where luggage would be coming out AND all of the signs were broken. See below.
















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Also, there was no place to sit because every available bench had a homeless person sleeping on it, including a man who had urinated in his pants. There were several elderly people who couldn't sit.














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Finally one of the carousels started to move, but nothing was coming out. The guy pictured below came over and started to check out the carousel... apparently the belt leading up to the exterior go-round was busted. After about 20 minutes of a horrible noise eminating from the busted belt, the entire thing shut down. Eventually the man had to use his feet to move the belt that leads up to the carousel, a la Flintstones, and then he tossed the luggage down to the revolving belt. That's what's pictured below.








Um, why is our airport such a mess? I could yell out "T.O.B.A.L.!" Or I could yell out, "Notlim!"

Click on the above to take a look at some photos from A.W. Thompson's series documenting the end stage of American nuclear weapons production, including photos from the former Rocky Flats Nuclear Weapons Plant.

Thanks so much to Patti Hallock for sending this info my way. Patti is a Philadelphia native and recent graduate of Parsons's MFA Photo program.

Thanks to Eric Gjerde for pointing out this beautiful book.

Sellout is a new blog focused on the often difficult practical aspects of being a visual artist. Money is a focus and I love that, because for some reason people are fucking NUTS when it comes to talking about money. Why this is, I don't know.

It's important to figure out how to live and survive if you want to produce work. Also, it's important to figure out how to live and survive, period.



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This last week my lady was in excruciating pain, unbearable pain, from a tooth. She got a root canal this week and it cost one thousand three hundred dollars. She has a kind of dental insurance that will refund some of the money paid, but we had to pay for it up front. Hellloooo, "Thank God We Have Enough Money Right Now To Pay For Tooth Fixing." That tooth payment was an awful lot, but we could still do it.

I take generic Zoloft and if I wasn't on my lady's health insurance with RX, I'd be fucked. I was on welfare for many years, and if I didn't have her insurance... whoa. My guess as to how I would eventually end up affording health care would be to go back to "indigence" and get back on Medicaid OR get a full time job which would have benefits. Both would impact my calling to produce work, there ain't no doubt. I'm saying this having just received a 50 thousand dollar grant... which, by the way, will allow me to finish I-95 and produce my work in the style I've become accustomed to, through at least 2010; ink-jets as well as color copies and adhesive backed lamination, swimming pools, movie stars. In the last few years the meaning of money has changed dramatically for us, particularly for me. I own a studio... well, the bank owns it for the next 28 years really and I can own it if I can keep paying for it that entire time. But that's really fucking big. The idea that I have that much money is beyond my scope. Please lord, please keep me from Joey Coyling with this $ and help me figure out how to make it last FOREVER!

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Aside: In 1981, Joey Coyle found $1.2 million in the middle of the street after it had fallen out of the back of an armored car. He was kind of a mess and it ended up bad.

Aside Aside: The person who I bought my studio from told me a story that involved Joey Coyle, Meth, a gun hidden in the coils behind a refrigerator and Joey's girlfriend, Linda. The most interesting part of the story involved how people thought for YEARS after the money was gone that Linda had some of the cash hidden away. Once, years and years after the money was gone, someone broke into her house and sledgehammered the basement floor looking for money hidden under the concrete.


Joey Coyle Obit

Finders Keepers: The Story of a Man Who Found $1 Million by Mark Bowden

I made these images when I was in El Paso in September and they have become important to the central idea for the book.

As part of my cold war obsession, I'm cooking up a plan to photograph right outside of Denver, CO at the former Rocky Flats atomic weapons production facility. My plan is to photograph both the former Rocky Flats plant workers and the changed landscape where the plant once stood. I'm just beginning to map out a plan and realistic time table for producing the photos. I am absolutely committed to this project and while I want to begin producing the photographs immediately, I will need some time to research where I'm going and who will be amenable to being photographed. And let me tell you... I'm going to kill it with this project. I'm really passionate about it and planning on spending time over several years working on a number of photo projects related to post-cold war issues. As far as I know there's not a body of contemporary work devoted to the ongoing issues related to the Rocky Flats plant, or an extensive body of work involving former nuclear weapons plants or the former plant workers.

The Rocky Flats Plant was a weapons production facility of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission that operated from 1952 to 1988. The plant is now closed, the buildings have been razed, and there are plans to convert the nuclear weapons plant to a wildlife refuge. Although the EPA has given the aok on the clean up, many environmental workers believe that the ground is still contaminated. My main interest is the workers who have acquired occupational illnesses having worked at the Rocky Flats plant.


Here's a lot of info on the plutonium and uranium laden world of Rocky Flats, CO.

1. "In 2005 Former FBI agent Jon Lipsky describes the US Department of Energy's ongoing cleanup effort at the Rocky Flats nuke site, scheduled to be completed by 2006, as "woefully inadequate -- a farce." As for the decision to make Rocky Flats a tourist destination, he said, "There is nothing safe or sane about it."

In 1989, Lipsky led an FBI raid on the Rocky Flats nuclear-weapons plant in Colorado after receiving reports that the plant posed a huge public-health threat. His raid, which took place over 18 days and involved more than 100 FBI and EPA officials, gave way to a nearly three-year criminal investigation into widespread radioactive contamination of the air, water, and soil at the 6,240-acre site and the surrounding suburbs of nearby Denver."

source- grist

2. "Health and Human Services Secretary Michael Leavitt ruled that Dept. of Energy (DOE), contractor or subcontractor employees who were exposed to radiation from 1967 through 2005 did not meet the statutory criteria for addition to the Special Exposure Cohort (SEC). He determined there was sufficient information and records available to estimate workers’ radiation doses with sufficient accuracy. Ill employees who worked at Rocky Flats from 1952 to 1966 were given SEC status because many were not monitored for their neutron radiation exposure.

By not being part of the SEC, over 22,000 former Rocky Flats workers will have to individually prove their radiation exposure caused their cancers. Meeting the statutory criteria is not easy. Applicants have to undergo a long, bureaucratic process that often takes several years. Many die before being awarded compensation. One in 10 Rocky Flats workers who qualified for compensation died before receiving it. Nationally, more than 60 percent of the 72,000 cases processed were denied."

source- USW

3. "So far, half of the more than 2,300 sick Rocky Flats workers have been denied compensation and were told their cancers and other illnesses are unrelated to years of working in some of the country's most dangerous industrial buildings at the now-demolished atomic bomb plant 16 miles northwest of downtown Denver. Hundreds more wait for responses.

Today, more than 60,000 former nuclear weapons workers are ill and believe that their ailments are linked to their Cold War work. The government denied almost all such links until 2000."

Monday, February 6, 2006

source- Rocky Mountain News

4. "On February 14, 2006, Berger & Montague won a jury verdict of $554 million on behalf of thousands of property owners against the former operators of the Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant, located about 17 miles northeast of Denver, Colorado. The verdict against the contractors, Dow Chemical Company and Rockwell International Corporation, is the largest verdict in Colorado history, and the first time a jury has awarded damages to property owners living near one of the nation’s nuclear weapons sites. It includes an award of $200 million in punitive damages. According to the National Law Journal's "Top 100 Verdicts of 2006," Berger and Montague's victory in the Rocky Flats Litigation was the third largest jury verdict in the United States in 2006."

source- Berger Montague

A shout out to Bun, who worked on this case in the early 90's.


Rocky Flats Cold War Museum


Nuke Worker

Rocky Mountain News 1

Rocky Mountain News 2

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Kid searching for Trinitite at the Trinity Test Site in New Mexico.

Inaugural Ball

G. Broadway


Katie Over the Hump Dec 2007


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Sept 2006

I grew up in a few parts of Philadelphia, but I spent the longest of my formative years in Logan Circle, a little neighborhood between Arch St. and the Parkway and between 18th St and 23rd St. It's a center city neighborhood within a few blocks of the big museums on the Parkway. Our house was 2 blocks from the Franklin Institute and my local library was the Main Library on the Parkway. It was great place to live as a kid.

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aside: In terms of Philadelphia libraries, interestingly enough the Cottman St. library was a really good library when I was growing up, I don't know if it still is. (friends, the Cottman St. library is in the heart of the Northeast, which, to put it delicately, is not a bastion of culture)
AND it beat out the Rittenhouse Square library by miles, which wasn't nearly as comfortable or expansive.

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I lived in Logan Circle from 5th through 12th grade and it was a fascinating place, economically diverse based on the original structure of the neighborhood, and a true, albeit small, neighborhood. Although a big gentrification push was happening even before we moved there, it was a mixed neighborhood with a very diverse, and enjoyable, group of neighbors.

My family lived on Spring St. for a year and on one rowhome side were the Newbolds, a wealthy couple with a newborn son. On the other side of our home were the Ebners, a working class family with 6 (maybe 7 kids) and with the youngest at Hallahan. They had a sink that didn't work in the bathroom but they owned and Atari AND an Intellivison.


We then moved to Van Pelt St. and our next door neighbor was "Alberta Mac", whose house was falling apart and was plagued with "critters" aka "mice." Alberta's son, who lived off and on with her, had a secret nickname of "Gary Gillmore." He was often drunk and he wore a jaunty Eagles tam-o'-shanter cocked to one side. Once, he shot at a cat from his window into our back yards. What the fuck.

Then they sold the house, it was rehabed, and Bootsie and Jim moved in. I loved Bootsie and Jim, but you can see from the name shift alone what was happening on the block.

Anyway, the block included a host of awesome people including, but not limited to: Joanne "Super Butch," Patrick's Family "Broke and Dealing with a Hyperactive Child" and Ray Murray "Host of Evening Magazine." It was quite a mix and a lovely neighborhood.

I love these photos and I think they'll make it pretty far into this year's I-95 edit. It will be a difficult read in a slideshow, unless the image is projected for more than 5 seconds. That makes this photo an unlikely candidate for inclusion in any slideshow... but not impossible, just unlikely.

I'm going to try and get out to see this show. It's at Ursinus College and I honestly have no idea where that is except it's about 30 miles from Philadelphia.

BEGGARS AND CHOOSERS:
MOTHERHOOD IS NOT A CLASS PRIVILEGE IN AMERICA

January 15 – March 22, 2008
Main Gallery

Curated by Rickie Solinger

Opening Reception: Sunday January 27, 2008 2:30 – 4:30 p.m.

The Berman Museum of Art is located at Ursinus College, Main Street, Collegeville, PA., 19426. Hours and admission fees are available on museum's website.

610-409-3500

Thanks to Colin Black for his reccomendation!

image 1938: this is the first image in the series and I think it's a real winner. I was just walking by and saw the crutches leaning there... I didn't have enough time, or space, to back up in order to get my lens in the middle to avoid bowing and so the lines aren't as plum as I usually like them, but I find that I like the slight bowing effect along with the flash in this photo.
Time made 9:10:45



image 1939: one second after I make the above photo, these guys rush into the shot. I think the crutches belong to the guy who picks them up, but I don't know for sure.



image 1940: The crutches immediately become a fake pecker.



image 1941



image 1942 : Time made 9:11:23, so not quite a minute between the first and last shots. I loved making all of these photos, knowing full well that the photos made after the first one wouldn't even make it from my memory card onto my computer. I was wrong about that though, because I became interested in the sequencing of shots made "in the moment" on New Year's Day, and the throwaway images made it far enough for me to share them as a part of the kind of contact sheet I would have if I wasn't producing digitally. Why am I showing this? I don't know, but I do know that I want to remain vigilant about keeping my working process as transparent as possible. As I've said in the past, it poses a lot of problems to let the first edit of photos be seen. One, because it often diffuses and lessens the inherent mystery of photography's frozen moments by exposing the skill, luck and judgment call that goes into creating a photograph. And, two, because the internet allow access to all of these images that can then be moved about and shown in completely different contexts. Would I be happy if "Image 1941" above was bandied about as representative of my work? No. But I know it's possible that it could happen and I still think it's worth the risk of allowing folks to see parts of the whole I-95 project from start to finish.


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I am working insanely right now... my lady hates for me to say that because it sounds as if I'm complaining or I'm boastful about it. But for real, I'm cooking with nuclear fission. Except for email where I'm cooking with a piece of Styrofoam because I'm so fucking behind again.

Right before Christmas I went to install the show in Bellevue/Seattle as well as to make some new work, then Hanukkah/ Christmas/ New Years Day. On Jan 2nd I flew back to the Pacific Northwest to give a talk at the awesome Henry, I stayed a few days and made some new work. Now I'm home and starting my SVA class next Wed and I'm flying to Mississippi the next day and coming home the following Tuesday and going back up to NY for my class the next day. Woah! Tiring and nuts but great and amazing.

or



I'm leaning toward the bottom configuration, with a different exposure.

Click above to listen. Of course, I have no idea what I said because I can't bear to listen to my own voice. I just hope I'm not saying something too ridiculous and moronic. If anyone can listen to the whole thing let me know if I say something insane.

Also, I love Jen Graves... super smart and super nice.

His open house bodes well for Philadelphia... hello Michael Nutter!

Entering: Michael Nutter: Open House

Exiting: John Street: I-Phone and giant bag of money.

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Also, I cracked up at this from the Philadelphia Turkey.

Because I went to Seattle on Jan 3rd, I hadn't really had a chance to begin go through the 2008 New Year's Day and Night photos until the plane ride home. It looks like there's only 2 or 3 keepers and out of those, I think only one will make it into the final 95 edit this year. I have put up a number of shots, but right now only 2 or 3 will make it past the intital naming and saving of photos. It's pretty nuts to have taken 500 photos and only be certain of the value of one of the photos that came out of that effort. Granted, many were made in the service of learning my new camera and many were made because it's the greatest day of the year, next to my lady's birthday, of course.

Welcome the first night of 2008!

I'm back from the Pacific Northwest... thanks so much to Abigail, head of the amazing Open Satellite Residency. Everything was awesome except that I think I have gotten a UTI while away and I came back home to Lynn Bloom having excruciating tooth pain.


Shout out to friends, new and old, in the Seattle/Tacoma Area...

Abigail
Rick
(and their fictitious baby)
Tamara Paris
Matt
Lander Jack
The Whole Moses family
The lady at the Goodwill who gave me 10, 10! dollars off of an illuminated globe. It was 12.99 and she said "I think that's just too much" and made it 2.99.
Jen Graves

All who came out to the show and the Henry Talk. Also, I loved the Henry. They have a great Kim Jones show up right now that's not to be missed if you live in the area.

Here is a series of photos made New Year's Night on 2 St. The photos are sequenced in the order each frame was taken.



image 1926- I make this shot to check the light and then went to ask the woman in the red in black hat if I could take a photo of her.



image 1927- I ask the woman in the red and black hat if I can make a photo of her and she asks the woman in the purple hat to pose with her. As they turn to pose this guy with an amputated hand jumps into the shot.



image 1928- The man yells, "Arggh, my arm" and the two women laugh. They all know each other and have a close relationship, although I can't tell what their relationship is.



image 1929



image 1930



image 1931- After fake yelling about his arm, the two women and the man pose together, and the woman in the purple hat and the man with the amputated hand are fake fighting.



image 1932- the woman in the black and red hat is laughing but still trying to pose by looking at the camera.



image 1933



image 1934- This moment was spontaneously acted out by these two and is completely posed. We are all hysterical after I made this photo. The woman in the purple hat tells me she can take him anytime, in real life.



image 1935- The man says, "Take a picture of my stump" and I ask about how he lost his hand The man tells me that his hand was bitten off by a shark when he was 9. It happened in Florida; he was swimming in the ocean. I push the fill flash down and begin to manually configure the exposure, but I don't know this camera well enough to do it without intense concentration on the dials.



image 1936- I use the fill flash



image 1937- we're just talking now and this is the last one in the series. Using the camera's internal clock, I know that 2 minutes and 24 seconds have elapsed between image 1927 and image 1937. The last photo is one that could possibly make it past the second round of editing.

This review, while not that flattering of the match up between me and Open Satellite, is totally true!

So tonight I showed some slideshows and talked about my work at the Henry Art Gallery and I think it went ok... who knows when you're talking about yourself?
Hey, this talk is great! It's all about me!

Thanks to all who came out, and a special thanks to Tamara Paris who came out. It's been about 15 years since I saw her and it was a highlight, not just frosted tips.

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About 20 years ago, Tamara and my then girlfriend, Heather, were assaulted at 10th and South. They were attacked because Heather looked like a dyke, no question about that, and it was enough to cause two men to punch her in face repeatedly. She was pretty beat up: black eye, big, busted swollen lip and broken glasses. It happen outside of a store where the two men worked; the owner of the store came out saw the assault in progress and then told Heather and Tamara to get off of the sidewalk in front of store while Heather looked for a lens from her broken glasses. Later that night, Heather and I and Tamara and her then boyfriend, Crow, went back and broke the store windows. I used a slingshot that I had recently brought home from Nicaragua.

I will never regret breaking those windows.

Tonight, after the lecture, I drove back to the Bellevue apt... you know, in my Chevy Impala rental car with a GPS. And Tamara, 7 months pregnant, drove home to her awesome husband and beautiful son. Our lives have been on a upswing ever since we smashed that glass like a Cohen at a wedding. We do what we love and live our lives with great joy. How great is that?

Open Satellite Artist Talk: Zoe Strauss
Thursday, January 3, 7 PM

Open Satellite presents the first Northwest solo exhibition of Philadelphia-based photographer and installation artist Zoe Strauss. Focusing her camera on the gritty neighborhoods of her hometown, Strauss creates tough, emotional portraits of the residents and architecture populating the streets of South Philadelphia, Kensington, and other working class areas. Her images, each considered part of a larger series begun in 2000, are ferocious studies of the American inner city. Zoe Strauss: Works in Progress, curated by Abigail Guay and Gretchen L. Wagner, will be on view through January 12, 2008 at Open Satellite in Bellevue (located at 989 112th Ave NE Suite 102). Please email info@opensatellite.org or call 425.454.7355 for more information.



http://www.seattleweekly.com/listings/galleries/347262