Untitled Possibly 1989 - 1991

Judith Joy Ross made this photograph with gelatin silver. She allows for the silver to activate and darken in the image, giving it a sepia quality, like an old memory. The photograph shows a young boy balancing on a bicycle, and there's something about the gesture that is echoed throughout the picture. The bike isn't shiny or new, it looks like it's been ridden. The boy himself is in a state of precarity, about to take off or maybe fall. The image is tonally quite unified, not many dark darks or light lights. This adds to the dreamlike quality of the picture, a feeling of both clarity and ambiguity. There's an interesting parallel to be drawn between Ross's work and the photographic portraits of Diane Arbus. Both sought out and immortalized the strange beauty of everyday people. Ross is interested in the beauty of childhood in the face of adulthood. She's saying that even in moments of play, we see the first signs of our future selves. It’s like she’s capturing a world in flux, a space where the certainties of childhood are always threatening to give way to the complexities of adult life.