Exhibition & Guided Tour

Cologne: Judith Joy Ross: »Photographies since 1982«

On September 26th, the Amerika Haus e.V. NRW presented a lecture of Judith Joy Ross in the context of the exhibition and in cooperation with the Photographic Collection / SK Stiftung Kultur.
The presentation was followed by a reception and the option to visit the exhibition.

For Judith Ross it was a very successful evening: "It looked great and Amerika Haus was to me the most interesting audience I have yet to experience. Their questions were incisive and came from a unique point of view. I was so happy to engage with them. I only wish I could belong to such an interesting group here in America."

 

Since the beginning of the 1980s, American photographer Judith Joy Ross (born 1946 in Hazleton, Pennsylvania) has created an impressive body of work with a focus on portraiture. Her own photography was created especially within distance of her hometown Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, a former mining region, in which people - particularly interested in photography - would call to mind the photographic perspective of Walker Evans. In her work, Ross favors series of photos developed over a long time period. She uses an 8 x 10 inch large format camera and converts her images into gold-shaded copies: this is a very detailed and brilliantly plotted technique, which is rather rare today.

 

 

 

In her photographic series, Judith Joy Ross brings into question stages of life, such as childhood and adolescence. But also political topics and their influence on specific concepts of life come to the foreground. The psychologically sensitive portraits emphasize the individual and express the complex relation between person and context in a subtle way. The artist faces the people as far as possible from ideals of beauty or media stereotypes, but as close as possible to everyday American life. By doing this, she gives room to unaffected, serious, innocent and joyful aspects of life. She offers the observer an up-to-date and realistic panorama of society, which shows parallels to the work of German photographer August Sander, who is one of the most important role models for her.

 

Photo: From the series Eurana Park, Weatherly, Pennsylvania, 1982. Untitled

© Photographs: Judith Joy Ross, courtesy Pace/MacGill Gallery, New York and Sabine Schmidt Galerie, Köln, 2011