Zoe Strauss

Artist lecture Tuesday, October 23, 2012 7PM
Timken Lecture Hall, California College of the Arts, San Francisco
Two Women, Camden, NJ, 2006

Self-taught photographer Zoe Strauss was born in 1970 in Philadelphia. She aspires “to create an epic narrative that reflects the beauty and struggle of everyday life,” which she historically examines within the context of her hometown. On her 30th birthday, she was given a camera and started taking pictures of life in Philadelphia’s marginal neighborhoods. She has since been described as the “chronicler of Philadelphia’s mean streets” and the city’s own Diane Arbus.

Between 2001 and 2011, she exhibited her photographs in a yearly exhibition titled Under I-95, which featured her prints affixed to columns under an elevated section of Highway I-95.

Strauss received a Seedling Award in photography from the Leeway Foundation in 2002, a Pew Fellowship in 2005, and in 2006, her work was included in the Whitney Biennial. In 2007, Strauss was named a 2007 USA Gund Fellow. This year the Philadelphia Museum of Art organized 10 Years, Strauss’s mid-career retrospective.


Larry Sultan Visiting Artist Program

Pier 24 Photography is pleased to present the Larry Sultan Visiting Artist Program in collaboration with California College of the Arts and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Each year, the Larry Sultan Visiting Artist Program brings six photographers, writers, and curators to San Francisco to offer free and open lectures, and to work one-on-one with students at California College of the Arts.


Larry Sultan Photography Award


Jonathan Calm, Double Vision (Recording I), 2018

Jonathan Calm

Fall 2019 Residency
Headlands Center for the Arts, Sausalito, CA

Click HERE for more information on the Larry Sultan Photography Award

Jonathan Calm is a visual artist who works in photography, video, installation, and performance. A central theme of his work is the relationship between photography and urban architecture, and the powerful role of images in the way architectural constructs shape the lives of individuals and communities.

In his most recent work, Calm explores the complex representation of African-American automobility from a historical and contemporary perspective, focusing and drawing on the importance and resonance of the Negro Motorist Green Book. Of this project, he explains, “the image of the infinite highway and the unbridled freedom to roam the land has always been considered a quintessential expression of the modern American spirit, but the black American experience of travel, which involves heightened subjectivity and exposure, has to this day proven a precarious privilege rather than an inalienable right.”

Calm’s art practice is international in scope and has been featured in numerous solo and group exhibitions, including Frequency at the Studio Museum in Harlem (2005); Role Play at the Tate Britain (2006); Black Is, Black Ain’t at the University of Chicago’s Renaissance Society (2008); Streetwise at the Reina Sophia Museum in Madrid (2008) and the Chelsea Art Museum (2011); deCordova Biennial at the deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum (2013); and Rooted Movements at LMAKprojects in New York City (2014). Calm currently lives in Palo Alto, CA where he is a faculty member in the Department of Art and Art History at Stanford University.