An untitled photograph by Judith Joy Ross is part of a series the Hazleton born photographer made in Eurana Park, Weatherly, Pennsylvania, in 1982. An exhibition of Ross's work will open April 24 at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.Hazleton-born photographer Judith Joy Ross, 77, doesn’t go for much chitchat with her subjects, despite a temporarily intense relationship she has likened to falling in love “for 15 minutes.
At locations, like Eurana Park in Weatherly, Pa., the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, Congress, public schools, a Black neighborhood in Northeast Philadelphia, she says she rarely says anything to her subjects beyond, “Don’t move.”. “I ask them to hold still. Just hold still. And usually with enthusiasm: ‘Oh my God, don’t move.’ I don’t have conversations with people, I have enthusiasms, because I really see something.
Ross says that through her portraits, she seeks answers — without actually asking — to questions like, “How do you deal with pain and suffering?” At Eurana Park, she was “looking for why life’s worth living and I found it here” in a place, with its young subjects, “where life is good. Not perfect. But good.”