Quote

I like getting stuff out of the way so you can see something clearly, see it sharply, have it be new again.

Zoe Leonard

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Zoe Leonard
Age: 63
Born: 1961
Born: January 1
Activist
Artist
Photographer
Printmaker
Video Artist
Liberty
New York
Stuff
Something
Way
Like
Sharply
Clearly
Getting

More quotes by Zoe Leonard

Image
I was really poor for most of my adult life.
Zoe Leonard
Image
Progress is always an exchange. We gain something, we give something else up. I'm interested in looking at some of what we are losing.
Zoe Leonard
Image
I don't quite understand how a generation and a half after the Second World War we've gotten where we are now.
Zoe Leonard
Image
I'm in all of my work, and there's nowhere to hide when you make work.
Zoe Leonard
Image
The world feels overwhelming to me on every level. Just the number of organisms that live on this planet. Our politics, our violence, psychology, emotions there's just a lot going on, right?
Zoe Leonard
Image
I never heard the term art world until I was in my thirties, and I was like, What are you guys talking about? It's the world, and we all live in the world!
Zoe Leonard
Image
I choose to work behind the camera. And I kind of want to make the work and then run away. The presentation of myself really feels complicated for me.
Zoe Leonard
Image
The career has to support the making and can offer a platform, can offer you a voice in the world. And that's an incredible thing. But it's complicated and seductive and weird and tricky. I think you have to keep figuring that out your whole life.
Zoe Leonard
Image
Making work for me is being in the world, but it's also being specific about being in the world. I'm interested in this increasingly rare space of contemplation and taking the time and energy to be thoughtful.
Zoe Leonard
Image
By nature, I'm a little distractible. I get very overwhelmed by the world.
Zoe Leonard
Image
I'll finish a body of work and think, Okay, I got nothing. That was it. I'm done. And then you'll turn a corner and be like, Oh my God! And it keeps happening. I feel so lucky.
Zoe Leonard
Image
I really loved music and went to a lot of clubs to see bands and dance. I loved going out.
Zoe Leonard
Image
I think making things that appear simple is incredibly hard.
Zoe Leonard
Image
I'm always amazed at how people make work no matter how intense the pressure.
Zoe Leonard
Image
You need to have your eyes open because it's really scary what's happening.
Zoe Leonard
Image
Photographers talk about their shoot ratio. Like four to one, six to one, ten to one! Whatever, I'm, like, seven billion to one. It is just ridiculous. But sometimes if you can hit it just right and get everything out of the way, something will resonate on multiple levels.
Zoe Leonard
Image
I grew up in Harlem, but I moved to the Lower East Side when I was a teenager and it was ... I feel like when I try to describe it, it doesn't sound believable. It just sounds like you're lying. And I see it on the faces of my younger friends.
Zoe Leonard
Image
What I've always liked about photography is that it's such a direct way of showing what's on my mind. I see something. I show it to you.
Zoe Leonard
Image
When people look at a photograph, they believe it... My photographs crawl along that edge. I document the world, but from my own biased point of view.
Zoe Leonard
Image
There's a desire for me in the work, even when I'm looking at the past, to be looking from the present. It's to be here now. It's looking in the present tense.
Zoe Leonard