Feature Articles


December Issue 2000

Weatherspoon Art Gallery Also Offers Works by Richard Ross

Fine art photographer Richard Ross is being featured as the Falk Visiting Artist at the Weatherspoon Art Gallery at UNC at Greensboro, Greensboro, NC. The exhibition will be on view through Dec. 30.

An artist of international acclaim, Ross has exhibited in major galleries throughout Europe, Asia and the United States in his 30-year career. The title of Ross's exhibition, fovea, is an anatomical reference to the physical workings of the eye, but also refers to the psychological workings of the mind's "eye," an equally important focus for any serious photographer.

"We see by means of not only what we perceive with our eyes, but by what we remember," wrote the artist, in an introductory essay to his work.

Comprised of 120 to 130 large-scale photographs stacked end-to-end in a grid, fovea is a visual diary of the artist's own memories over the past 30 years, in which friends, family and selections from his past work serve as subjects.

The fovea series might best be understood in relation to Ross's other work, which can be viewed on his web site at (http://www.silcom.com/~rross/). For instance, in the "museology", and "light" series, interior and exterior landscapes appear cool, analytic and inspired by classicism. Ross shoots these with his 6 x 6 Hasselblad camera.

The photographs in fovea arise from impulses that are more emotional, abstract and inspired by personal memories. He shoots these with a less sophisticated instrument - a child's plastic Diana camera.

Left brain and right brain are at work in the contrast, Ross says, but other metaphors he employs are more descriptive of his real relationship to his two favorite instruments.
"One is my right hand, the other is my left," he says. The plastic Diana he thinks of as "hotter" than his Hasselblad. "I've never liked cooking on a solo burner. I've always liked cooking on two burners," he explains.

Like flashes of memory, the images in fovea are sometimes clear, sometimes muddy and rich with emotion. The manner  of installation is also significant. The photos may be mounted in any order - even upside down - but always in the same grid arrangement, he said.

Ross has had a distinguished career on the world art stage. In addition to showing in the United States, his solo exhibitions have traveled to Germany, Scotland, London, Vienna, Madrid and to the Asian continent.  His work appears in major magazines in the US and abroad, and he works editorially for The New York Times Magazine, LA Times Magazine, Vogue, Frankfurter Allgemaine, L' Express, and others. He has produced three books of photos and writings, including the recently-published "gathering light".

Although Ross enjoys an international reputation, he continues to teach beginning photography at the University of California at Santa Barbara, where he is a professor and a former department chair. Beginning photography is his favorite course, he said.

"That's where the light bulbs come on," he said. "The worst thing is teaching upper division in the fall, because they think they know everything. They're so arrogant and uneducated. I've had lower division kids say they took my course by accident in their senior year, and it changed them, and they were sorry, now that they were going on to careers in engineering or other fields, that they hadn't taken it sooner."

For further information check our NC Institutional Gallery listings or call 336/334-5770, or check out their web site at (http://www.weatherspoon.uncg.edu).


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