Photographien

Judith Joy Ross has, over the past 30 years, come up with a very idiosyncratic view of average American daily life. In her hometown of Hazleton, Pennsylvania, she took pictures of schoolchildren in all the schools she had attended herself, creating a series of sensitive portraits that says a great deal about growing up, about equal opportunities that are equal in name only, and about life in the American heartland. Ross caused a stir in the 1990s with portraits she took in front of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington. The emotional breadth of responses on the faces of the anonymous visitors is stunning. Ross works using a plate camera, taking exclusively black and white pictures in the tradition of artists such as August Sander or Walker Evans, with his ''documentary style''. This book presents Ross' award-winning oeuvre comprehensively for the first time.