John Lonczynski in Mr. Joseph Rosato's Band Class, Hazleton Area High School, Hazleton, Pennsylvania
Judith Joy Ross American
Not on view
In the early 1990s Ross returned to her hometown, Hazleton, Pennsylvania, in a former coal-mining region, to photograph children in the public schools that she had attended in the late 1950s. Ross works with an antiquated large-format view camera and prints her photographs on printing-out paper, which she tones with gold to produce shades of chocolate brown and soft purplish grays. In most of the portraits, the students, ranging in age from six to eighteen, face the camera head-on with expressions and postures that convey a touching mix of innocence, boredom, self-consciousness, and angst. The pictures, like this one of a young rocker in band class, are often funny and sweet, but Ross’s ability to connect with her subjects also gives them an uncommon intimacy and emotional gravity.
