http://www.zoestrauss.com/zoe.html
I don’t know very much about Zoe Strauss or the projects she does but I do really enjoy the peculiar range of images that she groups together. I remember talking about her work a little last year in my photo class when her project “The Week of the Perfect Game” was up in the Modern Wing. The almost-collective opinion was that the images in the series were too uninteresting and didn’t feel as if any effort had been put into making them. A lot of Strauss’ images are taken with flash, or some other type of harsh, possibly unflattering lighting. She also photographs flat objects like signs, or text scribbled on buildings, or an arrangement of photographs on a wall. I think Strauss’ stark images actually form a dialogue about the way privilege plays a part in fine art photography and I really appreciate how far she takes the reductive quality of her photographs.
This particular image actually feels a bit different from her other ones in that there actually seems to be a range of space in the image and a cohesive color scheme. But when surrounded by the other types of images (close up objects, street portraits, etc.) it still feels like a cohesive part of a series. The image definitely seems to use color realistically, but the green cast from the florescent lights and the fact that we can’t see the sky makes the image feel more expressive/dramatic. But the ovens in the fore-to-mid ground are color balanced correctly. In this case the green cast from inside the building completely adds to the allied color palette: the yellow oven, and orange and green trim around the windows, even the sidewalk in the foreground seems to be a little bit green and orange and yellow at the same time.
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