RISD Museum presents Richard Ross photographs exhibition

TheRISD Museum presents an exhibition of work by Richard Ross on view from Monday, January 20.

Photographer Richard Ross’ very special exhibits Architecture of Authority and Juvenile-in Justice will be on display throughout the 2014 Celebration Series. Take some time to walk through and reflect on these powerful images that depict injustice and challenge viewers to seek social change. Witness a great example of an artist using his medium for the public good.

In pursuit of social justice, photojournalist Richard Ross often visits nightmarish places most people avoid at all costs – Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay, Syria and countless adult prisons and juvenile detention centers across the US. Most recently, through an ambitious project called Juvenile In Justice, he has been working to educate the public about the psychological horrors surrounding the growing crisis in the juvenile justice system.

Based in Santa Barbara, CA, Ross has traveled to 31 states to photograph and interview thousands of adolescent prisoners for his Juvenile In Justice project, which earned the 2012 ASME Award for Best News and Documentary Photography, has been exhibited widely and has been published as a book, with excerpts appearing on NPR, PBS, ProPublica and CBS News, among other media outlets. The young inmates tell heartbreaking stories of poverty, isolation, fear, hopelessness and mind-numbing boredom.

In his photographs, Ross tends to blur inmates’ faces to relay both their anonymity and sense of shame. He also captures the bleakness and raw despair, which come through in the contextual images showing the facilities themselves and in how his subjects lean, slouch and slump. “Most of the population [in youth detention centers] is made up of boys monitored by 24-hour surveillance,” he explains.

In the six years he has been doing this work and interviewing kids, Ross has discovered that most of the inmates don’t feign innocence – though their crimes range in severity. For instance, at the same facility in Reno, NV where a 10-year-old boy was held in an isolation cell after he stabbed a classmate, another boy was detained for stealing a bagel.

Moreover, Ross believes prison culture is steeped in archaic, Puritanical beliefs ­that perpetuate its pervasive dysfunction. “When something goes wrong, people seek revenge and retribution by putting someone away [in jail]. That’s a very Biblical concept – and I mean that in the worst possible way,” he notes. “People don’t realize that rehabilitation doesn’t happen [in cells]. It’s bullying – and there’s no excuse for it.”

More information at: www.risd.edu