Quote

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

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
Work
Tense
Present
Looking
Desire
Past
Even

More quotes by Zoe Leonard

Image
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
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
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
Image
You need to have your eyes open because it's really scary what's happening.
Zoe Leonard
Image
I was really poor for most of my adult life.
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
By nature, I'm a little distractible. I get very overwhelmed by 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
We're all busy. It's a very fast-paced world. And art - and by that, I mean culture in a wider sense - is one of the few spaces where we're allowed to look and think without an immediate response or reaction.
Zoe Leonard
Image
I don't think any of us thought Donald Trump could get this far.
Zoe Leonard
Image
I'd grown up poor I had no idea what it was like to be comfortable.
Zoe Leonard
Image
If the work is the horse, a career makes a great cart.
Zoe Leonard
Image
I like getting stuff out of the way so you can see something clearly, see it sharply, have it be new again.
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 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
I've been taking pictures since I was probably 16. I'm 54, and I can't believe how excited I am.
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
I really loved music and went to a lot of clubs to see bands and dance. I loved going out.
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