is "free of makeup" the new euphemism for "lesbian?"

(nonetheless this Philadelphia Inquirer article with Kate's quote had me bouncing in my seat and clapping! Also check Zoe out in the March 2006 Elle magazine [click image]. I had to wade through a lot of sexualized 12-year old girls to find it, but it was worth it! I feel like all those celebrity bloggers with the scanned magazine pages.)

Self-educated photographer wins acclaim
Suddenly, her images clicked.
By Karen Heller
Inquirer Staff Writer

Zoe Strauss did not come up from the academy. She did not come up from art classes, having never taken one, and is without a college degree. She came up from diapers and Endust.
For much of her life, Strauss was a baby-sitter and a domestic. "I was a great baby-sitter but a very bad domestic," she clarifies. Her income rarely exceeded $5,000 a year.

Then, on her 30th birthday, she received a Canon EOS Rebel, a basic point-and-shoot camera.
"By the second roll, I knew I was a photographer. I knew with certainty without seeing the prints," says Strauss, sitting in her South Philadelphia home decorated in a style best described as Devout Kitsch.

Five years later, Strauss has been selected to be in the Whitney Biennial, the nation's premier exhibition of contemporary work. One of 101 artists invited to participate this year, she is the only one living in the Philadelphia region.

"Zoe has an excellent eye, which all great artists have," Whitney curator Chrissy Iles says.
Strauss will have her own room to present a slide show, about 200 "searing, humanist portraits" as the Whitney news release states, mostly shot in Philadelphia and from a trip to the hurricane-ravaged Gulf Coast.

"It's ridiculously wonderful," Strauss says of the biennial, which runs March 2 through May 28.
In a New York show, which this year features established lions such as Richard Serra and Mark di Suvero, Strauss arrives without an agent or gallery representation. Her most important project to date is an annual installation of more than 200 images affixed to the concrete pilasters under the I-95 overpass at Front and Mifflin, held the first Saturday of every May for precisely two hours. Her photocopied images are $5 a piece, available at the show and also on her Web site, http://www.zoestrauss.com/. Prints sell for $300, a song.

"One local collector urged me to get Zoe to raise her prices," says Paula Marincola, director of the Philadelphia Exhibitions Initiative, who selected Strauss for a $2,500 Leeway grant in 2002.
But accessibility is a big part of her work and her politics, Strauss says, the affordability a statement as much as her subject matter, finding beauty in the forgotten and overlooked. Her photographs frequently include images of iconic signs and billboards, the industrial landscape, people she befriends on the street.

"I was very struck by her humanity," says Iles, who also selected Strauss for a $50,000 Pew grant in 2005. "There's something completely unsentimental about her work, and yet it has an emotional tug."

"She's extremely sophisticated in terms of her eye," Marincola says. "I would call her an extremely elegant photographer with formal structure that is very carefully considered and very beautiful."

Strauss' outlook is unblemished by cynicism or despair, constants in the often cruel art world where few of the deserving flourish.

"Zoe's a rare bird. I'm absolutely thrilled for her," says Philadelphia Museum of Art curator of photographs Katherine Ware. "She's busy going about her world, and not worried about the rest of us. And she works like crazy."

Ware acquired eight prints for the museum's permanent collection. "Zoe's this oncoming train, with this real sense of mission," Ware says. "She's really interested in exploring most human drives, often in some difficult situations. Her work is about our search for ecstasy and belonging."

Strauss is an exuberant, infectious woman who seems 10 years younger than her 35 years. Short, clear-eyed, free of makeup or affectation, she is a lover of kitsch, politics, good books, music, Philadelphia teams and South Philadelphia cuisine. She is disarmingly warm and self-effacing, given to hugging strangers, putting her subjects at ease, gaining access to their intimate moments - a crack addict in the kitchen, a crone with a cat - which she captures with her Nikon D70.

In addition to the biennial, Strauss has been chosen for the Institute of Contemporary Art's ramp installation project, April 22 through July 30.

Currently between studios, she is a deliberate artist, devoting full work days in her living room editing photos for her Web site.

The first member of her working-class Philadelphia family to graduate from high school, Strauss is deeply connected to her roots and her surroundings. She frequently shoots near her grandparents' former home at 16th and Susquehanna, and her mother lives a few blocks from Strauss' rowhouse (her father died when she was 6). Three younger siblings - there are three surnames between them - are artistic, "super smart and engaging." Brother Cosmo Baker is a noted DJ in Philadelphia and New York.

Though Strauss' artistic career started late and is still in its infancy, there is no mistaking the drive and scope of her work. "I am ridiculously ambitious," she says, seated before her laptop.
"My ambition, though, is somewhat different from that of the country and people in general," she adds. "I'm ambitious about doing great work, but the work doesn't define me. I want my art to be seen by everyone, but I don't think the work should have anything to do with income or economic status."

Every artist likes a patron, and here Strauss also has been "ridiculously lucky": Lynn Bloom, her partner of 17 years, has financially and emotionally supported Strauss through every endeavor, from baby-sitting to photography.

"Zoe has always done things in her own way and on her own terms. She never approaches her work in a traditional manner," says Bloom, who does marketing for Mitchell & Ness, the sporting gear manufacturer.

"She's never sought critical acclaim or altered her vision for anyone but herself. It's given me great faith in people that so many have embraced her work."

Which is useful for an artist with such a populist vision.

Strauss' fifth annual show under I-95, to be held May 6 from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. (rain or shine) is part of a 10-year project, free and open to everyone, attracting artists as well as locals from the neighborhood. "It's like a cathedral down there. It's a ruined cathedral," Marincola says. "She totally activates this space."

Before picking up the camera, Strauss made installation art. In 1997, she created the 5-feet-by-15-feet Public Chalkboard #2 painted on the side of an abandoned building at the corner of Wharton and Lawrence, leaving chalk and erasers around for three months so passersby could create art and commentary. A year later, she gave the neighborhood Collision at Sea, two 20-foot-long motorboats crashed on an empty lot at Fifth and Wharton.

Trolling through her laptop, revisiting the images she edits hour after hour, Strauss says: "I happen to think they're all really beautiful.

"You know, I really am very good," the Whitney Biennial artist says, and erupts into a raucous aria of joy.

For Information
Zoe Strauss' photography can be seen at http://www.zoestrauss.com/. The Whitney Biennial runs from March 2 through May 28 in New York. For more information go to http://whitney.org/.
Contact staff writer Karen Heller at 215-854-2586 or kheller@phillynews.com.