Judith Joy Ross (born 1946) is an American

portrait photographer Portrait photography, or portraiture, is a type of photography aimed toward capturing the personality of a person or group of people by using effective Photographic lighting, lighting, Painted photography backdrops, backdrops, and poses. A portr ...

. Her books include ''Contemporaries'' (1995), ''Portraits'' (1996), ''Portraits of the Hazleton Public Schools'' (2006) and ''Protest the War'' (2007), "exploring such themes as the innocence of youth, the faces of political power, and the emotional toll of war".

Personal life

Ross was born in

Hazleton, Pennsylvania Hazleton is a city in Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, United States. The population was 29,963 at the 2020 census. Hazleton is the second largest city in Luzerne County. It was incorporated as a borough on January 5, 1857, and as a city on Decembe ...

in 1946. She graduated from the

Moore College of Art Moore College of Art & Design is a private art school in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Its undergraduate programs are available only for female students, but its other educational programs, including graduate programs, are co-educational. Hist ...

in 1968 and earned a master's degree in photography in 1970 from the Institute of Design at the

Illinois Institute of Technology Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Tracing its history to 1890, the present name was adopted upon the merger of the Armour Institute and Lewis Institute in 1940. The university has prog ...

Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name ...

, where she studied with Aaron Siskind.

Works

Since the early 1980s, Ross has photographed a cross-section of the American population, especially people in eastern

Pennsylvania Pennsylvania (; ( Pennsylvania Dutch: )), officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a state spanning the Mid-Atlantic, Northeastern, Appalachian, and Great Lakes regions of the United States. It borders Delaware to its southeast, ...

where she was born and raised. Ross uses an 8×10 inch

view camera A view camera is a large-format camera in which the lens forms an inverted image on a ground-glass screen directly at the film plane. The image is viewed and then the glass screen is replaced with the film, and thus the film is exposed to exact ...

mounted on a tripod and her portraits are made on printing out paper by contact, a process by which a print is made by placing a negative directly onto

photographic paper Photographic paper is a paper coated with a light-sensitive chemical formula, like photographic film, used for making photographic prints. When photographic paper is exposed to light, it captures a latent image that is then developed to form a v ...

, and then exposing it to sunlight for a few minutes to a few hours. Her photographic antecedents include the German

August Sander August Sander (17 November 1876 – 20 April 1964) was a German portrait and documentary photographer. His first book ''Face of our Time'' (German: ''Antlitz der Zeit'') was published in 1929. Sander has been described as "the most important Ger ...

and the American

Diane Arbus Diane Arbus (; née Nemerov; March 14, 1923 – July 26, 1971
" The New York ...

. Her series include pictures of children at Eurana Park in

Weatherly, Pennsylvania Weatherly is a borough in Carbon County, Pennsylvania. It is part of Northeastern Pennsylvania and is located northwest of Jim Thorpe and south of Wilkes-Barre. The population was 2,525 at the 2010 census. History Originally called "Black ...

(1982), visitors to the

Vietnam Veterans Memorial The Vietnam Veterans Memorial is a U.S. national memorial in Washington, D.C., honoring service members of the U.S. armed forces who served in the Vietnam War. The site is dominated by two black granite walls engraved with the names of those s ...

Washington D.C. ) , image_skyline = , image_caption = Clockwise from top left: the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall, United States Capitol, Logan Circle, Jefferson Memorial, White House, Adams Morgan, Na ...

(1983–1984), members of the

United States Congress The United States Congress is the legislature of the federal government of the United States. It is bicameral, composed of a lower body, the House of Representatives, and an upper body, the Senate. It meets in the U.S. Capitol in Washing ...

and their aides in their Washington offices (1986–1987), laborers, people at shopping malls, and children at play near her home in

Bethlehem, Pennsylvania Bethlehem is a city in Northampton and Lehigh Counties in the Lehigh Valley region of eastern Pennsylvania, United States. As of the 2020 census, Bethlehem had a total population of 75,781. Of this, 55,639 were in Northampton County and 19, ...

. She has also photographed immigrants in New York City and

Paris Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. S ...

, and was commissioned by the

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) is a modern and contemporary art museum located in San Francisco, California. A nonprofit organization, SFMOMA holds an internationally recognized collection of modern and contemporary art, and was ...

to photograph tech workers in

Silicon Valley, California Silicon Valley is a region in Northern California that serves as a global center for high technology and innovation. Located in the southern part of the San Francisco Bay Area, it corresponds roughly to the geographical areas San Mateo Cou ...

. One of her major projects, pictures made from 1992 to 1994 in

Hazleton Hazleton may refer to: Places * Hazleton, British Columbia, Canada * Hazleton, Gloucestershire, a village in Gloucestershire, England ** Hazleton long barrows, Neolithic burial mounds at Hazleton, Gloucestershire, England ** Hazleton Abbey, a me ...

public schools she had attended in the 1950s and 1960s, was published by the

Yale University Art Gallery The Yale University Art Gallery (YUAG) is the oldest university art museum in the Western Hemisphere. It houses a major encyclopedic collection of art in several interconnected buildings on the campus of Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. ...

in 2006 as ''Portraits of the Hazleton Public Schools.'' Ross has been awarded a

Guggenheim Fellowship Guggenheim Fellowships are grants that have been awarded annually since by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the ar ...

from the

John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation was founded in 1925 by Olga and Simon Guggenheim in memory of their son, who died on April 26, 1922. The organization awards Guggenheim Fellowship Guggenheim Fellowships are grants that have been ...

(1985), a city of

Easton, Pennsylvania Easton is a city in, and the county seat of, Northampton County, Pennsylvania, United States. The city's population was 28,127 as of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census. Easton is located at the confluence of the Lehigh River, a river tha ...

Council on the Arts Grant (1988), the

Charles Pratt Charles Pratt (October 2, 1830 – May 4, 1891) was an American businessman. Pratt was a pioneer of the U.S. petroleum industry, and he established his kerosene refinery Astral Oil Works in Brooklyn, New York. He then lived with his growing fam ...

Memorial Award of $25,000 (1992), and the Andrea Frank Foundation Award (1998). Monographs and exhibition catalogs of her work have been published internationally.

John Szarkowski Thaddeus John Szarkowski (December 18, 1925 – July 7, 2007) was an American photographer, curator, historian, and critic. From 1962 to 1991 Szarkowski was the director of photography at New York's Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). Early life and ca ...

at the

Museum of Modern Art The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It plays a major role in developing and collecting modern art, and is often identified as one of ...

in New York selected Ross' work for the first exhibition in the New Photography series. In 2011, Die Photographische Sammlung in Cologne organized a retrospective exhibition of Ross's work which traveled to the Kunstmuseum Kloster in Madeburg and the Foundation A Stichting,

Brussels Brussels (french: Bruxelles or ; nl, Brussel ), officially the Brussels-Capital Region (All text and all but one graphic show the English name as Brussels-Capital Region.) (french: link=no, Région de Bruxelles-Capitale; nl, link=no, Bruss ...

Publications

*''Judith Joy Ross: Contemporaries: a Photographic Series.'' New York:

, 1995. . With an essay by Susan Kismaric. *''Judith Joy Ross: Portraits.'' Hannover:

Sprengel Museum Sprengel Museum is a museum of modern art in Hanover, Lower Saxony, holding one of the most significant collections of modern art in Germany. It is located in a building situated adjacent to the Masch Lake (german: Maschsee) approximately south ...

, 1996. . With an essay by Thomas Weski. Exhibition Catalog. *''Portraits of the Hazleton Public Schools.'' New Haven:

, 2006. . With an essay by Jock Reynolds. *''Protest the War.'' Göttingen:

Steidl Steidl is a German-language publisher, an international publisher of photobooks, and a printing company, based in Göttingen, Germany. It was started in 1968 by Gerhard Steidl and is still run by him. Overview The company was started by Gerha ...

, 2007. . With an essay by Andrew Szegedy-Maszak. *''Living with War – Portraits, Vietnam Veterans Memorial, Gulf War, Protest the War.'' Göttingen: Steidl, 2008. . Edited and with an essay by Heinz Liesbrock. Exhibition catalogue. *''Judith Joy Ross. Photographs Since 1982.'' Cologne: Die Photographische Sammlung/SK Stiftung Kultur im Mediapark, 2011. . With essays by Gabriele Conrath-Scholl and Claudia Schubert.

Collections

Ross' work is held in the following public collections: *

Metropolitan Museum of Art The Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York City, colloquially "the Met", is the largest art museum in the Americas. Its permanent collection contains over two million works, divided among 17 curatorial departments. The main building at 1000 ...

, New York: 5 prints (as of June 2018) *

, New York: 55 prints (as of June 2018) *

Museum of Fine Arts, Houston The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (MFAH), is an art museum located in the Houston Museum District of Houston, Texas. With the recent completion of an eight-year campus redevelopment project, including the opening of the Nancy and Rich Kinder Build ...

National Gallery of Canada The National Gallery of Canada (french: Musée des beaux-arts du Canada), located in the capital city of Ottawa, Ontario, is Canada's national art museum. The museum's building takes up , with of space used for exhibiting art. It is one of the l ...

, Ottawa *Die Photographische Sammlung, Cologne *The Pilara Foundation Collection,

Pier 24 Photography Pier 24 Photography is a non-profit art museum located on the Port of San Francisco directly under the San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge. The organization houses the permanent collection of the Pilara Foundation, which collects, preserves and exh ...

, San Francisco *

Victoria and Albert Museum The Victoria and Albert Museum (often abbreviated as the V&A) in London is the world's largest museum of applied arts, decorative arts and design, housing a permanent collection of over 2.27 million objects. It was founded in 1852 and nam ...

, London: 4 prints (as of June 2018) *

, New Haven.

References

External links

Ross talks about her various photography series
(video) {{DEFAULTSORT:Ross, Judith Joy 1946 births Living people People from Hazleton, Pennsylvania Artists from Pennsylvania American women photographers 21st-century American women