A new kind of neighbourhood watch

Until now, installation artist and photographer Zoe Strauss has been more accustomed to exhibiting her photographs of marginalised people in her home town of South Phildelphia under the Interstate that runs through the city. Strauss, who was given a camera for her 30th birthday back in 1990, runs the Philadelphia Public Art Project, the objective of which is to bring art and photography to a new audience by exhibiting it in non-traditional venues rather than the more customary white cube. 

Her project Under I-95, became an annual event in which the photographer mounted her photographs on columns beneath the highway and sold signed photocopies of the prints for just $5 each. Nowadays those early prints reach up to $3000, so it's no surprise she's just been given a mid-career retrospective Zoe Strauss: Ten Years, at the Philadelphia Museum of Art (until April 22).

170 of the photographs she originally showed in the Under I-95 exhibitions grace the gallery walls while 54 more photographs have been blown up and are exhibited on billboards around the city as part of the exhibition - occasionally to the surprise of the photo's subjects. On seeing her face on a billboard, Strauss's 69-year-old neighbour, Antoinette Conti, commented: "I didn’t know it was going to be as big as Gibraltar!”

In a recent interview with Philadelphia Daily News (watch the video below), Strauss explained that the subjects of the photographs for Under I-95 were, “literally anything that came within my life. All of the images are images I made on the street. There were generally three forms - portrait, text based work and architecture, and they all managed to bounce off of each other in a way that made people move around the exhibition and move from one image to another and make their own narrative.” The pictures aimed “to create an epic narrative that reflects the beauty and struggle of everyday life.”

Unsurprisngly, her mother, Ilene Baker, is a fan. "It's the honesty and expression on people's faces that blows me away," she says. "There's something open about Zoe, and safe, so that people feel that they can show her that moment of honesty. It's not just showing someone lifting their shirt and showing a scar."

For those who won’t get the chance to see the show or the billboards, you can get a glimpse into Strauss’ world flicking through the gallery of images above. You can also read her blog here.