FotoFocus Announces Conversation With Activist And Photographer Zoe Leonard

FotoFocus, the nonprofit arts organization that champions photography and lens-based art, is pleased to announce that internationally acclaimed artist Zoe Leonard Will join FotoFocus Artistic Director Kevin Moore in conversation on March 29, 2018, as part of the organization's Lecture and Visiting Artist Series.

"FotoFocus is dedicated to bringing extraordinary talent to Cincinnati for intimate and unusual discussions. We're honored to welcome Zoe," says Mary Ellen Goeke, FotoFocus Executive Director. "Rightfully acclaimed for her photography and activism, we're thrilled to share her insights with the public."

2018 is a landmark year for the celebrated artist, with major museum surveys opening at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles (MOCA) and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York. A pioneering voice in photography, Leonard, a self-taught artist and activist, has made an indelible mark on the way we see the world. Leonard is also the author of "I want a president" (1992), a provocative poem that became a viral sensation in the pre-digital world, and which continues to be performed, imitated, and riffed upon to this day.

The event, which is free and open to the public, will take place at 7PM at the Cincinnati Art Museum. For more information, please visit www.fotofocuscincinnati.org.

FotoFocus brings photography and lens-based art programming to its hometown of Cincinnati year-round. Previous speakers in the FotoFocus Lecture and Visiting Artist Series have included Doug Aitken, Jo Ann Callis, Gregory Crewdson, Thomas Demand, Philip-Lorca diCorcia, Roe Ethridge, Larry Fink, Michael Kenna, Laurie Simmons, David Benjamin Sherry, Paul Graham, Barbara Kasten, Todd Hido, Tina Barney, Alex Soth, John Waters, Doug + Mike Starn, and Joyce Tenneson.

This October, the acclaimed FotoFocus Biennial will return with over 200 participants, including Berenice Abbott, Mamma Andersson, Eugène Atget, Karl Blossfeldt, Francis Bruguière, Teju Cole, Chris Engman, Miranda July, Thomas Ruff, and Akram Zataari. The FotoFocus Biennial is the largest photography and lens-based art biennial in America. The ambitious festival is made possible through the collaborative efforts of hundreds of organizations, and will be on view across 70 museums and galleries across Greater Cincinnati, Northern Kentucky, and Dayton and Columbus, Ohio. Each Biennial is structured around a unifying theme; for 2018 that theme is Open Archive.

Zoe Leonard (American, b. 1961) has spent her career challenging assumptions about documentary objectivity in her work. As in her famed Analogue series, a decade-long project in which she chronicled the closing of small shops in New York, Leonard remains dedicated to organizing her subjects in a way that emphasizes subjectivity and visual authenticity. Her photographs of trees, birds in flight, chain link fences, shopfronts, anatomical museums, and even her own family photographs emphasize the character of a particular vision. She is interested in the way vision is classified and organized, and brings order to a wide variety of subjects through repetition and examination of the same object from multiple viewpoints. Hers is a penetrating examination of what is passing before us in life, and our attempts through photography to make things endure. Her work has been exhibited at major galleries and museums all over the world, including Whitney Museum of Art, The Museum of Modern Art (New York), Hauser & Wirth (New York), Chianti Foundation (Marfa), Antony Meier Fine Arts (San Francisco), Paula Cooper (New York), the Columbus Museum of Art (Ohio), and many more.

ABOUT FOTOFOCUS
FotoFocus is a Cincinnati-based nonprofit arts organization that champions photography and lens-based art through exhibitions and public programming. Since 2010, the organization has engaged art and educational institutions throughout the region to support and expand the cultural dialogue around the medium that has come to define our time.

With an emphasis on intellectually and academically rigorous programs, the organization provides uniquely enriching access to lens-based art, film, and practices inspired by photography. FotoFocus has collaborated with hundreds of organizations, curators, academics, and artists to present more than 600 exhibitions and programs, having contributed funding for the majority. The organization has brought hundreds of internationally-renowned photographers to the Greater Cincinnati region. Signature programming includes FotoFocus Biennial, FotoFocus Symposium, and FotoFocus Lecture and Visiting Artist Series.

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