The Stewart Sisters, H. F. Grebey Junior High School, Hazleton, Pennsylvania, 1992,
From Portraits of the Hazleton Public Schools
Gelatin silver chloride printing-out-paper, gold toned, printed 2008
10 × 8 inches
Edition 15/25 (full edition not realized)
In 1992 Judith Joy Ross began to examine her past by making portraits of the students in the small-town Pennsylvania public schools that she had attended in her own youth. Her photographs of school children explore the formulation of individual identity, a theme that this portrait of identical twins both heightens and complicates. She made these pictures with a large-format, 8×10-inch view camera, a slow methodical process that had the added benefit of settling her subjects into a less guarded attitude. Likewise, the prints are exposed gradually in the sun, yielding finely detailed contact prints that capture her subjects, and their presence, in exquisitely rendered detail.
Read the New York Times profile:
‘The Pictures Are Miracles’: How Judith Joy Ross Finds Pain and Nobility in Portraits
