Arizona Artist Spotlight: The art of noticing with Zana “Zee” Peralta
Published: 07/31/2026
Meet Greater Phoenix-based street photographer Zana “Zee” Peralta, featured in GPEC’s A New Way To See Greater Phoenix exhibit
Look around.
That’s the invitation behind Found III, Zana “Zee” Peralta’s photograph of a downtown Phoenix high-rise reflected, its mirrored form angling toward the sky. The command sounds simple. But pedestrians, drivers, bicyclists and light rail passengers don’t always do so as they travel through a city built for moving fast and looking straight ahead.
At some point, downtown Phoenix became more for Zee than her place of work. It became a place to wander, reflect and reconnect with her creative side. “I spent countless hours walking the streets with my camera, intentionally slowing down and allowing the city to reveal itself in ways most people walk past,” she says. That observation is exactly what shaped her featured piece.
That same observation is what makes her work such a natural fit for Greater Phoenix Economic Council’s (GPEC) A New Way To See Greater Phoenix exhibit, on display through Oct. 31. The exhibit celebrates artists who uncover overlooked details and reframe familiar scenes into something worth a second look, and Found III does exactly that: a view most people never take the time to see, because most people never stop to look. Zee did.
Her process rarely starts with a plan. When it comes to street photography, she leans on curiosity rather than a fixed idea, putting herself in environments where she can wander and stop for whatever catches her eye. “I rarely set out to create a specific image,” she says. Found III is what that openness looks like when it pays off: a moment she didn’t chase but was ready for when it arrived.
For Zee, Greater Phoenix actively shapes her work. The city has pushed her to stay curious, take in different perspectives, and notice the range of people and stories that make it distinct. “It has become both my canvas and my teacher,” she says. Her hope is that the work lets others see Greater Phoenix the same way — as a living, evolving story full of beauty, resilience and connection.
Art is proof that a neighborhood has a story. That a place and its people matter. A mural does it. So does a photograph. So does an exhibit that hands a familiar city back to you at a different angle. “Art has the power to help people feel seen,” she says. She finds that same spirit throughout Greater Phoenix’s creative scene, which brings people together through perspective and collaboration.
Collaboration fuels her, but Zee knows when to unplug from it. Ask where she recharges and the answer isn’t a coffee shop or a co-working space — it’s the open desert. Out past the noise, surrounded by mountains and saguaro cacti, her mind exhales. She doesn’t see emptiness out there; rather, she sees life, resilience and possibility. “The desert has a way of quieting everything else,” she says.
The advice she carries into every shoot is simple: Don’t chase perfect. Allow yourself to create freely, with curiosity. It is the same instinct that led her to look up at a building most people never notice.
She describes Greater Phoenix’s art scene in three words: resilient, diverse and evolving. Standing in front of Found III, it’s hard not to see all three, caught in a glance at a city still revealing itself to anyone willing to slow down enough to look.