“On the corner of McClellan and Fifth streets in South Philadelphia, a group of young boys pass the afternoon executing daredevil flips off a stack of old throwaway mattresses. A woman driving by, a novice photographer, glimpses the small bodies somersaulting through the air. Startled, she pulls over, and winds up snapping seven or eight quick photographs.
In the best shot, a boy hangs upside down in the center of the frame while another boy stands off to the side. He’s gazing directly into the camera’s lens, shyly hiding the smile lighting up the rest of his face with a fist curled in front of his mouth.
The wall behind the boys is painted deep red, darker than the natural brick beneath. About 10 feet up the wall, the paint line looks like the high watermark of a recent flood.”
So begins Tara Murtha's very well-written cover story for Philadelphia Weekly, describing the 2001 photo “Mattress Flip” (above) that is perhaps the most well-known from Philadelphia-based photographer Zoe Strauss. Since that time, Strauss has become one of America’s top artists, and beginning Saturday at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, her portfolio will be on display in a special exhibition entitled Zoe Strauss: 10 Years. But it is more than that.
In addition to the gallery, Strauss’ works are displayed in a companion book and on 54 billboards around the city of Philadelphia in “The Billboard Project,” ad-free exhibitions of her work located in many of the neighborhoods where her photos were taken.
“I really believe Zoe is one of the most important artists working in all of the United States. If I didn’t believe that, I wouldn’t have launched a major exhibition,” says Peter Barberie, the Brodsky Curator of Photographs at the Alfred Stieglitz Center for the museum. “Zoe is well-known but to have the chance to present the first really comprehensive exhibition of her work is exciting for us. Zoe grew up loving this art museum and she knows this place well, so it was as she says, a lifelong dream, but I don’t think it was something she thought would happen this soon.”
The-three-tiered exhibition has gotten an incredible amount of media attention, from the Philadelphia Weekly feature to a story in the Philadelphia Inquirer and capped off with coverage in Thursday’s New York Times, among others. The display will also feature a projected slideshow of the work on the art museum columns through Monday, along with pay-as-you-wish admission January 16 for the Martin Luther King holiday (the museum is typically closed on Mondays).
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“Zoe has a lot of charisma and there is a really big following for her work,” Barberie says about all of the attention. “Her use of her blog and Facebook has also helped in the promotion and are such a unique part of her work. In many ways, that has enabled us as a museum to connect further with the public in a way that we’ve not often done.”
The exhibit officially opens Saturday and runs through April 22 in the Honickman Berman Galleries of the museum. For more information, visit http://philamuseum.org/exhibitions/745.html.
