Children, primary and secondary school students, members of Congress, war protesters ...
After showing a large number of these photographic portraits, done in black-and-white since 1982 by American artist Judith Joy Ross, the Foundation A will present Ross's most recent project: The Devil Today and Reading to Dogs. Most of the photographs selected for this show are in large format, and in colour. The frame has clearly expanded. For this new series, Ross privileges inhabited landscapes and group portraits whose subjects do not lock eye with the camera lens. Faithful to her social and political commitments, she looks for ordinary folk. She becomes more discreet; she observes scenes of day-to-day life. Concerned by industrial corporatism, troubled by the transformation and irreversible degradation of our natural environment and resources, she photographs citizens who have gathered as part of a committee, activists, people determined to assert their convictions and defend their rights. These images touch, for example, on the problem of bituminous sands or of fracking for shale gas, both of which can have potentially disastrous consequences for the environment: The Devil Today.
Other photographs show teenagers and kids looking for support and comfort in animals. On this occasion, Judith Joy Ross revisits the Public Library in Bethlehem, Pennsylvannia, to photograph the participants of a national literacy programme. The resulting images show us children honing their skills, accompanied by a pet: Reading to Dogs.
Judith Joy Ross's recent colour photographs are reminiscent of certain images of artists such as Jeff Wall or Rineke Dijkstra. Constructed, though not staged, they reflect above all the artist's concerns, and they also sound out like an inescapable call to reflect upon our relation, to others as well as to nature.
This exhibition is produced with the collaboration of the Pace/McGill Gallery, New York.
