NEW YORK, NY.- Photographer Zoe Strauss is the focus of a mid-career retrospective at the International Center of Photography from October 4, 2013 to January 19, 2014. Including more than 100 color images, Zoe Strauss: 10 Years is an unflinching view into the economic, social, and personal complexities of life in Strauss’ own Philadelphia neighborhood and other areas of the United States. In Strauss’ words, it is “an epic narrative about the beauty and struggle of everyday life.”

Inspired by American documentary photographers such as Walker Evans, William Eggleston, and Nan Goldin, Strauss’ work focuses on the fascinating and often disconcerting realities of everyday life. The majority of her work—portraits, urban landscapes, and documentation of signage—were taken in and around Philadelphia. Strauss has also traveled widely throughout the U.S., including Gulfport and Biloxi, Mississippi, where she photographed the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

Between 2001 and 2010, Strauss displayed her photographs once a year in an unused public space beneath the I-95 highway overpass in South Philadelphia. In these annual one-day exhibitions, she mounted her photographs to the concrete bridge supports and viewers could buy photocopies of the prints for five dollars. Zoe Strauss: 10 Years is a critical assessment of this decade-long project.

“There is incredible humanity and generosity in Zoe’s photographs,” said ICP Curator Kristen Lubben. “And while the individual images are striking, it is the totality of the ‘epic narrative’ that makes the project so moving. Rather than a static body of work, Zoe conceives it as a dynamic social intervention, animating public spaces and engaging directly with communities.”

The exhibition was organized by the Philadelphia Museum of Art, where it was first shown in 2012. It is accompanied by a catalogue with essays by Strauss, organizing curator Peter Barberie, and photo historian Sally Stein.

Born in Philadelphia in 1970, Zoe Strauss began making photographs in 2000. Although never formally trained as a photographer, she founded the Philadelphia Public Art Project in 1995 with the objective of exhibiting art in nontraditional venues. Subsequently, she turned to the camera as the most direct instrument to represent her chosen subjects.

In recent years, Strauss has participated in the 2006 Whitney Biennial, and has had solo exhibitions at the ICA Philadelphia, in 2006, and the Bruce Silverstein Gallery, in 2007 and 2009. She has participated in group shows or projects at the Centraal Museum in Utrecht (2006), PPOW Gallery (2008), and the Art Institute of Chicago (2009), among others. She was a 2005 Pew Fellow and a 2007 United States Artists Gund Fellow in the Visual Arts. In 2008, she published her first book, America, which received an Artforum “Best of 2008” award. In 2012, she was nominated for membership to Magnum Photos. Strauss is working on Homesteading, a major new body of work commissioned for the 2013 Carnegie International. The project explores the legacy of industry in the town of Homestead, Pennsylvania, site of the former Homestead Works and the 1892 Homestead Strike, one of the most important labor disputes in American history. More information can be found at http://homesteadpa.tumblr.com.

Zoe Strauss: 10 Years was organized by the Philadelphia Museum of Art with support from The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage through the Philadelphia Exhibitions Initiative. The ICP presentation is supported by the ICP Exhibitions Committee.