[Winter 2023]

By Michèle Cohen Hadria

LE BAL, Paris
16.03.2022 — 18.09.2022

[Excerpt]

Portraiture is not my favourite photographic genre. However, when I visited the first exhibition of Judith Joy Ross’s work in France, I felt that it opened a world to me – one built of respect for and a subtle approach to human beings; these impressions seemed, curiously, both impalpable and tangible.

Ross, “discovered” in 1984 by John Szarkowski, at the time the director of photography at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, was influenced by some eminent figures in the history of photography, including Timothy O’Sullivan, Walker Evans, and, especially, August Sander. She evinces a rare capacity for amazement when she uses a view camera, which always seems to present her with fresh miracles. Even today, she remembers her first photograph, of a small crushed box pierced by the raking light of a low sun, as “very beautiful and very mysterious,” and she muses, “Who knows? God connected with the mystery of life through making images. A real connection.”…

[ Complete issue, in print and digital version, available here: Ciel variable 122 – NIGHT ROUNDS ]
[ Complete article, in digital version, available here: Judith Joy Ross, Photographies 1978–2015 — Michèle Cohen Hadria ]