Portraits of the Hazleton Public Schools Judith Joy Ross, Jock Reynolds

Acclaimed for the emotional acuity of her portraits, Judith Joy Ross is an accomplished photographer whose work is found in the collections of America's major museums. This exquisitely produced book focuses on one of Ross's most personal series to date - sixty-nine portraits of students at public schools in Hazelton, Pennsylvania. In the early 1990s, Ross returned to the schools of her youth as a way of revisiting the experience of growing up. Shot with an old-fashioned 8 X 10-inch view camera, the photographs in "Portraits of the Hazelton Public Schools" are unpretentious and astonishing in their psychological insight. Shown together for the first time in this volume, they reveal the universally wonderful and terrifying rite of passage of going to school.

Born in Hazelton, Pennsylvania, in 1946, Judith Joy Ross first took up photography as a student at the Moore College of Art in Philadelphia. In 1981, Ross began working with an 8 X 10 in. view camera and since then has used it to create a radically original body of work within the parameters of the traditional photographic portrait. While she is best known for her photographs of children, she has also completed portrait series of visitors to the Vietnam Veteran's Memorial in Washington, D.C., and of members of the United States Congress. Jock Reynolds is the Henry J. Heinz II Director of the Yale University Art Gallery and has published extensively on American photography and contemporary art.

These are sumptuous, depth-filled images, enhancing the pseudo-historical mien of Ross work. They are universal while also being unique.Dave Gagon, Deseret Morning News -- Dave Gagon "Deseret Morning News"