Zoe Leonard

Zoe Leonard's work spans photography, sculpture, and installations, offering a conceptual and poetic perspective on the world and frequently questioning the evolution of society.

Biography of Zoe Leonard

Zoe Leonard was born in Liberty, New York, in 1961. During her teenage years, she relocated to the Lower East Side and enrolled at City-As-School High School in Manhattan. However, at the age of sixteen, she dropped out and started experimenting with photography using her mother's camera.

Since then, she has predominantly resided in New York City, where the urban landscape often serves as the focal point of her artistic exploration. Leonard gained international recognition following her installation at Documenta IX in 1992.

Tracing her career through the years, Leonard has garnered significant recognition in the art world. She received grants from the Creative Capital Foundation in 2000 and 2001. Her contributions were further acknowledged with the Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant in 2005 and the Anonymous Was A Woman Award in 2006. Leonard's artistic prowess continued to shine as she became a finalist for the Deutsche Börse Photography Prize in 2010 and was honored with the Bucksbaum Award from the Whitney Museum of American Art in 2014. Most recently, she was named a recipient of the prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship in 2020.

Apart from her artistic pursuits, Leonard has been actively involved on the advisory board of the Hauser & Wirth Institute since 2018. She is also a founding member of the artist collective fierce pussy. 

Leonard has shared her expertise as a teacher at Bard College and held the role of co-chair of the photography department at the Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts from 2011 to 2015.

Her recent solo exhibitions include "Zoe Leonard: View from Below" at Contemporary Art Gallery in Vancouver (2024), "Excerpts from Al río/To the River" at Galleria Raffaella Cortese in Milan (2023), "Zoe Leonard A view from the Levee" at Capitain Petzel in Berlin (2022), "Aerials" at Hauser & Wirth in London (2018), "Misia, Postwar" at Galerie Gisela Capitain in Cologne (2017), and many more. 

Currently, she lives and works in New York, USA.

Zoe Leonard's Art Style

From her earliest aerial photographs to her explorations of museum displays, anatomical models, and fashion shows, much of Leonard's art revolves around the themes of framing, classification, and the organization of visual perception. Her sculptural creations highlight her meticulous attention to detail and her ability to evoke profound reflections and emotions.

In the mid-1990s, Leonard spent two transformative years living and working in Eagle, Alaska, an experience that deeply influenced her subsequent artwork. Her later pieces often delve into the intricate relationships between humanity and the natural environment. During her time in Alaska, she engaged in diverse roles, including farming, working on a commercial fishing boat, and serving with the National Park Service. This period inspired her acclaimed photographic series, "Hunting," which explores themes of subsistence economies and human interaction with the wilderness.

From 1998 to 2009, Leonard dedicated herself to "Analogue," a monumental project comprising an installation of 412 C-prints and gelatin silver prints, along with a portfolio of 40 dye-transfer prints. Inspired by Eugène Atget and Walker Evans but grounded in a contemporary reassessment of photography's role, "Analogue" examines shifts in global labor, trade, and social dynamics concurrent with the transition from analog to digital image production.