Category: old bones

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.

Holding: serious jello

Posted on Posted in as written, da net, old bones, the fora 
holding onto jello
the past becomes your mistake

anger is an anchor that pulls you under so far you can’t understand
digital in a chemical forum… 
in a decade it becomes the most used image tool of the same group

One person changes over time on one of the original chemo-photo forums.

the mod takes umbrage, feels insult from the newcomer… he makes this serious.

A newcomer seeks kinship thru conversation about a chosen camera. They bring an opinion of what photography, large format photography is. Google or friendly link blogs sent them to the “place” of repute. Too bad: dispute arises, to the point that they are called a “troll,” that notorious disturber of early internet spaces. Trolls asked questions not for answers, but for induced dissension. Almost every newcomer seems trollish even though they’re just not accustomed to the customs… they don’t know who and how to bow. Over time, they usually leave.. the non-troll. The NT realize they are asking the correct question of the wrong people. Perhaps the wrong time.

Seriously, this forum did discuss things in the “lounge” the members only area that goog/bots don’t browse. Why topics are brought into the large open net isn’t known to me. In the case of this forum of declining membership, they began allowing small format, even digital postings as long as they didn’t involve ‘technical’ discussion. This should mean that they are only allowed to discuss imagery; no tech talk. Sure enough these threads have exploded in length, however, as you should expect, the discussions are about the lens, camera, filter, software… that is, they are technical. These members stumble over anything other than process or purchase.

Their tastes don’t change even though their techniques do. They make the same pictures they always did. They see the same no matter the camera. Their pictures came from the 50s; were perfected before they hit their fifties and can’t change now that they are in their endings.

Blocking others also blocks yourself.