Judith Joy Ross
Photographs 1978 - 2015
Judith Joy Ross is a photographer of people rather than a maker of portraits. She is a street photographer but she does not wander the streets with a camera to find her subjects. She is also a studio portraitist but she does not bring people inside her studio to be arranged in her own space. Instead, she typically decides to conduct a campaign on selected subjects. Ross has called such campaigns occasions. These occasions arise from a personal experience. There is a theme that determines what we are shown and how we are to look. In her work she explores such themes as the innocence of youth, the faces of political power, and the emotional toll of war.
The serie with pictures of children at Eurana Park, Weatherly, Pennsylvania (1982) was made at the occasion of her mourning over the recent death of her father. Eurana Park held special meaning for Ross, who recalls when her father brought the family there on special occasions. It represents the longing for carefreeness and youthfull innocence. Portraits of visitors at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Wasington DC (1983 – 1984) were made when Ross herself was preoccupied with how to deal with pain and suffering. The pictures reveal the emotional toll of war. Her portraits of members of the United States Congress and their aides in their Washington offices (1986 – 1987) gives political power a face.
Her series also include pictures of laborers, people at shopping malls, and children at play near her home in Betlehem, Pennsylvania. One of her major series are pictures made from 1992 to 1994 in Hazleton public schools she had attended herself in the 1950s and 1960s. There is always a personal link. This makes her portraits always very personal.
Judith Joy Ross was born in Hazleton, Pennsylvania in 1946. She studied art at the Intitute of Design In Chicago founded by László Moholy-Nagy. After graduation she began teaching art and photography. Teaching deepened her appreciation of pictures made by great photographers past like August Sander. The normal focal-length lens and shallow depth of field she deployed, just like August Sander, kept the context of the picture at a remove. In 1985, her portraits at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, Washington D.C. were included in a four person show entitled “New Photography” at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. This started off her career as a photographer.
This book is a retrospective that explores the life and career of Judith Joy Ross illustrated by two hundred of her images. It encompasses the best work of the photographer. The book is divided in different sections. It starts out with a section aptly titled Beginnings. Followed with a section called Eurana Park encompassing Ross’ first major project and some of her most well-known pictures. The book moves through more sections, clusters of photographs, for the most part chronologically following her career.
Judith Joy Ross: Photographs 1978 – 2015
Photographer: Judith Joy Ross
Publisher: Aperture
Published in 2022
Hardback, 24 x 28 cm, 312 pages, 200 images
Text by Svetlana Alpers, Addison Bross and Joshua Chuang
Contributions by Adam Ryan
Chosen by people immersed in the photobook world as one of their favorite photobooks of 2022