Mattress Flip Front, 2001 – Zoe Strauss @ ICP!

Mattress Flip Front, 2001 - Zoe Strauss @ ICP!

For a decade between 2001 and 2010, Philadelphia photographer Zoe Strauss (b. 1970) showed her photographic works once a year in a public space beneath an I-95 highway overpass in South Philadelphia. In these annual one-day exhibitions, Strauss mounted her color photographs to the concrete bridge supports and viewers could buy photocopies for five dollars. Through portraits and documents of houses and signage, Strauss looked unflinchingly at the economic struggles and hardscrabble lives of residents in her own community and other parts of the United States. She describes her work as “an epic narrative about the beauty and struggle of everyday life.” Strauss, a self-taught photographer and political activist, sees her work as a type of social intervention, and she has often used billboards and public meetings as venues. This exhibition is a mid-career retrospective and the first critical assessment of her decade-long project.

Urban renewal?

Urban renewal?

As China pushes ahead with government-led urbanization, many are worried. Will the rural-to-urban transition face the same plight as postwar housing projects in Western countries, creating a new set of troubles that could plague Chinese cities for generations? The NY Times has been publishing a thought-provoking series of articles:

Global Warming – good news + bad news

Global Warming – good news + bad news

In the US,  overall C02  emissions were down by 4% in the year mainly because of a continuing shift from coal to gas in the generation of electricity. Shale is now responsible for one third of US gas production and almost one quarter of total oil production (but coal use is rising in the UK and Germany!)