Zoe Strauss Chronicles Philadelphia's Urbanity

Lind argues that Strauss' work transcends so much of the 'ruin porn,' that has become popular since images of flooded New Orleans and abandoned areas of Detroit arrived in galleries in the mid-2000s. Strauss' photographs are "more affecting because while political and economic commentary abound in art today, little of it connects the devastating effects of policy and globalization to the unseen underbelly of American cities." She manages to make the photographs personal and strengthen the interaction between subject and viewer.

Strauss' first retrospective has recently opened at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, where she fought to lower the price of admission, and convinced the museum to allow her to exhibit more than 50 works on billboards around the city.