Category: Criticism

Show+: Judith Joy Ross

Posted on Posted in Criticism, minimum daily requirement, old bones, on photographers, Theory: figurative, Theory: narrative

Judith Joy Ross, April 24–August 6, Philadelphia Museum.

“The Philadelphia Museum of Art is the only US venue for the retrospective exhibition of work by Judith Joy Ross, which opens April 24. The museum is showing some 200 of Ross’s gorgeous and unassuming portraits of ordinary people: students, soldiers, voters, members of Congress, children at a Pennsylvania park during summer vacation. Ross has focused much of her work in and around eastern Pennsylvania, where she was born and still lives, making portraits that reveal a deep, if brief, connection between photographer and subject.”

https://philamuseum.org/calendar/exhibition/judith-joy-ross

“Judith Joy Ross has, as an artist, no formula. She starts over again each time—the riskiest way to do it. She has a style, of course, but it is austere. It cannot, if she panics, be used to take the place of content.”
—American photographer Robert Adams
extended conversation with Judith Joy Ross

More about her: The American documentary photographer, Gregory Halpern, recently called her “the greatest portrait photographer to have ever worked in the medium”. Alys Tomlinson, an acclaimed young British photographer, who acknowledges her as an influence, says: “I don’t understand why she isn’t more well known. Maybe it’s because she is drawn to people that you might well pass on the street and not notice. She elevates them with her camera. Her portraits are not neutral. There is an empathy on her side. A deep connection. She makes you look closely at her subjects, and think about them.” Interestingly Ross tells me that she seldom photographs rich people and “only sometimes” poor people. “I’m looking,” she says, “for people like me.”

–from a long, and compelling article in the Guardian (https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2022/mar/22/my-subjects-feel-special-most-of-the-time-judith-joy-ross-on-her-sensual-portraits) from 2022.

Divided Developer

Posted on Posted in Carp Fishing, Criticism, da net, minimum daily requirement

bulletin boards have sections and sub-sections like an endless sales list– down into parts list– the way some part of the web was built. The bulletin boards.

The photo forums segregate as well. this camera, that camera, by size. Cause or attraction.

When Merg and Friends attempt to discuss, they defer. They await another gathering. They want the return of something. Perhaps the better nature of a prior century. Perhaps the Academy or the Salon. An authority to provide rankings, structures of value. Some way to say that this is a work worthy of more attention than that one. Something to study. To put into the study. To have others study.

stumbling over words. Pick an answer from your world. Or skip the question Mr

you seem to be able to load your own work into a forum divided into categories… even expressing “like
for images like you own.

The salons provided the list of categories: Landscape, Portraiture, Genre-Scenes, History, and Still Life. As well, they gave us a ranking system: (1) History Painting; (2) Portraiture; (3) Genre Painting; (4) Landscapes; (5) Still Life.

These guidelines came from the assumption that they reflected the inherent moral force of each genre. Beauty is a moral message.

Or, if the categories you seek are based upon formal, rather than subject, Freart provided:

  • invention
  • proportion
  • colour
  • expression
  • composition

Liking things that are like you; not uncommon. We rarely see beyond our shadow. 

there’s nothing worse
than a sharp cliche of a fuzzy idea

nothing worse than a cliche from someone else
a stolen cliche
value judgements/ justifications, usually negative
to distinguish himself from you. to stand apart. you are meant to stand in awe

they think they're talking to the ages. they aren’t. 
they’re just talking to the aged

// making it simpler: only 2 even read the question https://www.largeformatphotography.info/forum/showthread.php?171626-10-greatest-living-photographers/page3

//