Quote

Something about photography is tied to a very specific relationship with the material world. It doesn't have to be, but the way I practice it, it is. So there's an act of observation, but it's not an act of objective recording. It's about framing something and seeing it and understanding that it's relational.

Zoe Leonard

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Zoe Leonard
Age: 63
Born: 1961
Born: January 1
Activist
Artist
Photographer
Printmaker
Video Artist
Liberty
New York
Understanding
Specific
Doesn
Observation
Something
Material
Relational
Way
Photography
Framing
World
Materials
Recording
Relationship
Objective
Seeing
Tied
Practice
Objectives

More quotes by Zoe Leonard

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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
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I was really poor for most of my adult life.
Zoe Leonard
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What attracts me in photography is not so much a fine arts approach, but rather photographs as documents... All the ways in which human beings have documented the world in an attempt to order it, in an attempt to consume it or rule it or hang on to it in some sense.
Zoe Leonard
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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I'd grown up poor I had no idea what it was like to be comfortable.
Zoe Leonard
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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
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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
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If the work is the horse, a career makes a great cart.
Zoe Leonard
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I'm in all of my work, and there's nowhere to hide when you make work.
Zoe Leonard
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I'm always learning. I can't imagine doing anything else.
Zoe Leonard
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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
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I like getting stuff out of the way so you can see something clearly, see it sharply, have it be new again.
Zoe Leonard
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I really loved music and went to a lot of clubs to see bands and dance. I loved going out.
Zoe Leonard
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I've been taking pictures since I was probably 16. I'm 54, and I can't believe how excited I am.
Zoe Leonard
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There's a lot of psychological material that you inherit from your family.
Zoe Leonard
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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