Let me add my voice here to what Libby said about Zoe Strauss. Here is a young artist of talent with an amazing, mature eye who gets pictures of shocking intimacy from people on society’s fringes. Her photographs of America’s underbelly (both human and built) are epic in scope and quietly riveting.
Strauss is a generous artist without gallery affiliation. Sharing her art, which she does like a kind of out of era hippie — she practically gives it away at $5 a print — seems a labor of love.
With her old fashioned magic lantern show the other night (which was another giveaway), she turned her art into a shared community experience which is kind of where it belongs. When the audience clapped and hooted at the end of each of the six mini slide shows, we were clapping for the sweet, young artist, for her great images and for the theatrical tour de force she staged that brought us together. How many times can you clap for art? It was great.
Libby called the work democratic and indeed it is.
