2014-15 Dodd Professorial Chair: Zoe Strauss

The Lamar Dodd School of Art welcomes Philadelphia-based photographer Zoe Strauss to campus as this year's Dodd Professorial Chair:

For a decade between 2001 and 2010, Philadelphia photographer Zoe Strauss (b. 1970) showed her photographic works once a year in a public space beneath an I-95 highway overpass in South Philadelphia. In these annual one-day exhibitions, Strauss mounted her color photographs to the concrete bridge supports and viewers could buy photocopies for five dollars. Through portraits and documents of houses and signage, Strauss looked unflinchingly at the economic struggles and hardscrabble lives of residents in her own community and other parts of the United States. She describes her work as "an epic narrative about the beauty and struggle of everyday life." Strauss, a self-taught photographer and political activist, sees her work as a type of social intervention, and she has often used billboards and public meetings as venues. This exhibition is a mid-career retrospective and the first critical assessment of her decade-long project.

Strauss' Dodd Chair lecture is on Tuesday September 2 at 5:30 p.m. in room S151 of the school of art. The lecture is free and the public is invited to attend.

Image: Zoe Strauss, Mattress Flip Front, 2001. Courtesy International Center of Photography.