Make of this Whatever You Want: Violence and Intimacy in Zoe Strauss’s I-95 Project

Abstract

Over the course of ten years, during the first Saturday in May, photographer Zoe Strauss exhibited photos for three hours on cement pillars beneath elevated portions of Interstate 1-95 in Philadelphia. Strauss’s street photographs are often violent and unapologetic: a woman unzips her jeans to show a hysterectomy scar; another woman huddles to light a crack pipe; a vacant - eyed elderly woman stands in an abandoned lot clutching a dog, her unbuttoned nightdress and coat reveal that she is naked. This essay traces the evolution of Strauss’s I-95 project, drawing upon her writings, reviews of Strauss’s work, attendance at several of her under I-95 exhibits, and an interview with the artist. I propose that Strauss’s methodology with I-95 – how she made and exhibited photographic work – engaged viewers in the “everyday” of urban restructuring. By “everyday” I mean the ordinary and messy making and unmaking of lives in the midst of structural forces often beyond our control. I approach Strauss’s photographs through the lens of deindustrialization in Philadelphia, the representational uncertainties that her images evoke, and her resonance with other social documentarians who offer us ordinary moments as extraordinary ones.