Zoe Leonard is a contemporary American artist known for her work in photography, sculpture, and installation art. She often explores themes related to gender, sexuality, identity, and the urban environment. One of her notable works is “Analogue,” a series of photographs capturing the changing urban landscape of New York City storefronts. Leonard’s art often engages with political and social issues, including feminism, queer rights, and economic inequality. She’s recognized for her critical eye and the way she addresses these topics through her artistic practice.
Zoe Leonard Quotes
1. “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
2. “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
3. “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
4. “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
5. “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
6. “You need to have your eyes open because it’s really scary what’s happening.”
— Zoe Leonard
7. “I’m in all of my work, and there’s nowhere to hide when you make work.”
— Zoe Leonard
8. “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
9. “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
10. “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
11. “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
12. “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
13. “I think making things that appear simple is incredibly hard.”
— Zoe Leonard
14. “I like getting stuff out of the way so you can see something clearly, see it sharply, have it be new again.”
— Zoe Leonard
15. “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
16. “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
17. “If the work is the horse, a career makes a great cart.”
— Zoe Leonard
18. “I’d grown up poor; I had no idea what it was like to be comfortable.”
— Zoe Leonard
19. “I’m always amazed at how people make work no matter how intense the pressure.”
— Zoe Leonard
20. “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
21. “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
22. “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
23. “I was really poor for most of my adult life.”
— Zoe Leonard
24. “By nature, I’m a little distractible. I get very overwhelmed by the world.”
— Zoe Leonard
25. “I’ve been taking pictures since I was probably 16. I’m 54, and I can’t believe how excited I am.”
— Zoe Leonard
