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 LeonardI 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 LeonardThe 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 LeonardI don't quite understand how a generation and a half after the Second World War we've gotten where we are now.
Zoe LeonardWhat 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 LeonardMaking 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 LeonardThe 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 LeonardProgress 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 LeonardAfter the First World War, it was, like, let's form the League of Nations, we have to learn to work together. It's the only way we're going to survive. And now it's like we're undoing these very fragile institutions that were built after the First and Second World Wars that were about nations working on a kind of global diplomacy for our mutual benefit. And we're undoing them at such rapid-fire pace.
Zoe LeonardI 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 LeonardPhotographers 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 LeonardI 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 LeonardI really loved music and went to a lot of clubs to see bands and dance. I loved going out.
Zoe LeonardWe'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 LeonardI've been taking pictures since I was probably 16. I'm 54, and I can't believe how excited I am.
Zoe LeonardWhen 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 LeonardI like getting stuff out of the way so you can see something clearly, see it sharply, have it be new again.
Zoe LeonardWhat 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