The self-taught artist and street photographer Zoe Strauss has brought art to nontraditional venues through initiatives such as the Philadelphia Public Art Project. She is best known for her annual one-day outdoor photography shows held under an area of Interstate-95 in Philadelphia, which became an important way for disenfranchised citizens and people in marginalized neighborhoods of the city to come together for a day of civic discourse and social interaction.

At a time when the Occupy protests continue to influence our nation's political discourse, Zoe Strauss has been an early visionary of how and why we need to remember all Americans, regardless of geography or income. Her work is all the more remarkable, considering that she didn't become a photographer until age 30 and has no formal art education.

We congratulate the Character Approved Strauss on her mid-career retrospective at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, which opens on January 14. In coordination with the show, the Billboard Project, a series of 54 billboards throughout Philadelphia featuring photos from Zoe Strauss, will launch on January 12. Zoe Strauss calls her new exhibition "an epic narrative that reflects the beauty and struggle of everyday life," and it's hard not to agree once you've seen her raw photographs of working-class America.

[Image: Zoe Strauss, La Corona via Philadelphia Museum of Art]