Culture shock lives within RaMell Ross‘ photographs. The photographer’s home is in Greensboro, Alabama where he captures it’s intimate community of people and their introspective interactions with their environment. This is art that is rarely depicted in today’s contemporary photography field. Ross brings a rare perspective to the table through his fascination of documenting an atypical portrait or landscape. With Ross’ talent of positioning his subjects, the photographer isn’t afraid to experiment with lighting and color in order to create an image that he is completely satisfied with.
Hi Ramell, how are you doing? Can you tell us about your background and how you became a photographer?
My path to photography was a long one. I do also think I am just approaching its potential. Early in my life there were other things that satisfied the mind and senses but they all sorta spread thin once photography showed its depth. I was born in Germany to military parents and moved around bit once we moved to the states. We ended up in Northern Virginia. I went to public school there and ended up excelling at basketball and earned a scholarship to Georgetown University. I took a photo class my final year in school and it sorta planted a seed that would be watered by a bunch of traveling ensuing graduation. As I traveled I began to obsess over the visual and realized I always had. I just never acknowledged it. From there the blinders were on and I began to think photographically.
You have a series on your website called “(In Progress Series)”, can you give us some insight on where you’re currently at with it?
Well, the series is evolving. The more I look at the images already taken and then photograph something I feel adds to the depth of the series, the more complex the equation becomes. I can say though that I am amid a new approach to exploring socially conscious ideas. I am still working on the methodology and I don’t want to at this moment over define the series. I would keep an eye on it though. I have some slides in the fridge waiting to be processed! I hope to be finished with it by summers end.
How would you say your background of studies in English and Sociology has contributed to your photographs?
I would say they imbue them. They are great tools in highlighting aspects of reality. With little foot notes that articulate what we see. Sociology for the theories and breakdown of society and English for the narrative and poetic functioning of our interactions. They are great lens to view things through and platforms to start conceptualizing projects. Or filters to pull projects through. I mean, photography has a vocabulary and it most often relates to some social science.
What is the story behind The Black Belt Project, your solo exhibition in New York. Has that happened yet?
The Black Project started when I was photographing abandon schools in Alabama. I know, ruin porn, exploiting beauty in decay, blah blah blah is what you can say but just because some modest beauty-seeking photographers have spoiled the function of such photographs for the message and concept driven photographer doesn’t mean that there can be no valid meaning in said documentation. As I am sure you noticed, I was hesitant to photograph the abandoned because of the current, yet fading, (has it faded? hopefully. it will be back though) trend of photographing abandon spaces. But I saw the forgotten supplies and schools as such a rich metaphors for the reality of the education system in Alabama- specifically, in the Black Belt. I run youth work force development and GED programs for out-of-school young adults in Greensboro, Alabama and hearing the stories they would tell about their experiences in school could drop the jaw of a statue. So I ended up photographing a lot of them too to draw parallels. Naturally I photographed my surrounding too but soon everything became one. Each series responding to the other. Relationships between images formed. I decided to lump it all in one project since each series essentially contributed to one comma filled idea.
The show happened back in June and went very well! I was also able to share it in detail on a panel titled: The Concerned Photographer at PDN’s Photography Expo a few weeks ago in NY.
In your series Second Chance Dream – the photographs give us a deep feeling of hopeful positivity. Can you elaborate on the words that were written on each portrait?
I am glad you got that feeling from them. I can’t though really elaborate on each of the words written because I do not want to misrepresent each student. I will tell you the concept behind the series, which I feel, contributes, ever so slightly, to a sufficient answer to your question:
My students, because of their lower socioeconomic standing (which of course determines most visible and audible representations of them as people to the public) are stereotyped, judged and, generally speaking, casted into characters which are so reinforced by their surroundings and their stagnation, that they almost become true. I did not want to photograph them and allow my photographic practice to determine how they came off to a viewer so I put their first impression more in their hands by allowing them to describe themselves in one word. Shift the dynamic of the portrait. Each word would also point to the vocabulary range and so education and so many many other things that can be considered. I mean, it’s a challenging thing to sum your self up in a word. If not impossible. We are complex. I encourage you to elaborate on each word, as you can bring in your ideas of them, enabling you to critique the source and accuracy of your conclusions in comparison to some else from a difference perspective.
What are the main themes behind your photographs? What impression do you want viewers to take from them?
Society. Our robotics. It’s construction. The modes in which we think. The acceptance of inequality at the expense of our individual freedom. Ideas of freedom. It’s impossibility. Ideas. Ideas. Stereotypes. More ideas. Expectations. The profound representative natural of gesture. Our social stagnation. Luck. Luck. Fortune.
I want people to invest there thoughts and ideas into my work and then objectively critique them. Hopefully this points towards a truth.
