Judith Joy Ross
Untitled

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Images(4)

Artist Judith Joy Ross (American, born 1946)American, born 1946

CultureAmerican

Titles

Untitled
from the series Portraits at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, Washington, D. C.

Date1984

PlaceWashington, District of Columbia, United States

MediumGelatin silver print

DimensionsImage: 9 15/16 × 8 in. (25.2 × 20.3 cm)
Sheet: 9 15/16 × 8 in. (25.2 × 20.3 cm)

Credit LineMuseum purchase funded by the National Endowment for the Arts and Photo Forum 1988

Object number88.373.2

Not on view

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Department

Photography

Object Type

PHOTOGRAPHS

DescriptionAlthough Maya Lin’s design for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial was initially—like the war itself—deeply controversial, it quickly became a place of pilgrimage, grief, and meditation. Shortly after it opened, Judith Joy Ross began photographing at the site—not the polished black granite walls inscribed with the names of the dead, but rather the faces of those who came to pay tribute to the fallen and ponder the cost of war. A portraitist of uncommon sensitivity, Ross photographed visitors using a large-format camera and a shallow depth of field that isolated her subjects in their own worlds of thought.
ProvenanceThe artist, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania; purchased by MFAH, 1988.
Exhibition HistoryExhibited Photographic Masterworks: Recent Acquisitions from the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston Glassell School January 23 - March 4, 1990

Inscriptions, Signatures and Marks

Inscribed in pencil, verso, bottom center: #2
Signed in pencil, verso, bottom right: Judith Joy Ross 1984

Signed in pencil, verso, bottom right: Judith Joy Ross 1984

Cataloguing data may change with further research.

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