Judith Joy Ross was born in 1946 in Hazelton. Thanks to her photographs, I met her earlier this month in Paris at Le Bal, an exhibition space dedicated to artists whose work shows them interacting with the world. Until September 18, 2022, Le Bal is hosting the first comprehensive exhibition of this Pennsylvania photographer’s work.
Judith Joy Ross is best known for portraits that she calls “pictures.” They represent a collaborative effort, she insists, because she creates them with the people she photographs. In the 1960’s, while studying at Moore College of Art and Design in Philadelphia, Ross first discovered photography. In those days, she “stole” images, a woman carrying shopping bags in Center City Philadelphia, young men in the streets of Allentown, portraits taken without consent.
Early on, Ross realized that “stealing” was not for her. She was seeking a connection with her subjects and this could not exist without their consent. Anxious and judgmental by nature, when she looked through the lens of her camera, her way of seeing others changed. She sensed their energy and was filled with respect for the person she was about to photograph. This bond with her subjects helps explain why Judith Joy Ross is considered as one of America’s greatest portrait artists.
This reputation is also connected to how she takes a photo. In the late 1970’s, she began using a wood and metal box camera set on a tripod. Rather than work in a studio, she carried it on her back, setting up 50 pounds of equipment in the street in order to take a picture. “Stealing” was no longer possible. She was too conspicuous. And once she convinced a subject to pose, she slipped beneath a curtain to take the shot.
Until a decade ago, when the materials she needed became unavailable, Ross made photographic portraits much as it was done 150 years ago. To develop them, she used gold-toned studio proof paper, which does not require chemicals to produce a print. Placed against the large 8x10 negative of her Deardorff box camera, the paper is exposed to ultraviolet light, which can simply mean the light of the sun, with exposure times ranging from 15 minutes to an entire day. Like each encounter with her subjects, each resulting print is unique, and exposure could go on indefinitely. To fix the image, the paper is immersed in a gold chloride solution.
Taking a quick glance at a portrait by Judith Joy Ross, you might say she worked in black and white. Definitely, her photos do not reproduce the colors of the real world. Yet, upon closer scrutiny, each one reveals a nuanced palette of browns, grays and golds, the alchemy of the materials she uses and the photographer’s eye. The box camera produces a clear foreground image, leaving the background of her pictures blurred.
Camera, paper, light, vision, here is a way of taking pictures that requires craftsmanship and patience—in more ways than one.
Today Ross lives in Bethlehem, and eastern Pennsylvania has long been the territory of her work. In the early 1980’s, she returned to Eurana Park in Weatherly, PA, where she spent her summers as a child. She had recently lost her father, the owner of a five-and-ten in Hazelton. In her mourning, intuitively, she returned to childhood. She made pictures with children met in the park where she once played.
Lugging her equipment, setting up, Ross herself was a “sight,” and when she arrived, it was as if the circus had come to town. What child had ever seen a camera like hers? How exciting to be photographed that way. Fear, excitement, pride and some mistrust emanate from the subjects of her photos of that period. Looking at those children in their bathing suits, hair wet, shivering, we somehow see ourselves. I was filled with memories of Tuscarora State Park, the Pottsville pool, Mauch Chunk Lake, where Ross herself has gone to photograph.
Hazelton, Freeland, Nanticoke, Easton, Bethlehem, Allentown, these are some of the towns where Ross has worked, yet theme as much as place determines the subject of her work. Endowed with patience and persistence, she often combines the personal with the political. In 1984-85, she set herself up in Washington, DC, to photograph visitors to the recently completed Vietnam Veterans War Memorial. Many refused but in the closeup portraits of those who accepted, we perceive dignity, pain and a shared sense of loss.
The following year, after having written to every member of Congress, requesting to make a portrait of each, 117 accepted. Her desire? To get to the humanity beyond the politician whether she shared their beliefs or not.
In 1990, during the first Gulf War, in Bethlehem, she made portraits of young Army reservists about to leave for service in Iraq.
In 1992 and 1993, with the permission of the Hazelton Area School District, she entered schools with her box camera and equipment, setting herself up as discretely as possible in a corner, and took pictures of students and teachers. What better way, Ross claimed, to convince people to pay their property taxes than to remind them of what it’s like to be kids at school.
In 2001, just after 9-11, she travelled to Eagle Rock in West Orange, NJ. She was not alone. Many were there to stare at the devastation of lower Manhattan. Ross made portraits of those whose eyes were looking east.
The political and the personal have continued to determine Ross’s work. Her methods have changed. Today she uses a 35mm film camera and has begun working in color, in search of the nuances she obtained when developing photos the “old-fashioned” way. As always, she is seeking a relationship with her subjects, and the respect and affection she feels for them glows in her portraits.
Today Ross has an international reputation, yet here is a woman who remains close to her subjects and, in many cases, their working-class roots. Looking at her pictures, I say to myself, “I recognize these people.”
To explain why, I’ll let Ross conclude: “These pictures tell stories many of us remember from our own lives but they are pictures of someone else. And so the line between us and them gets blurry. Whose story is this? Answer, our story.”
