Living with war - Heinz Liesbrock

In the photographs by Judith Joy Ross the person is caught in his time and historic dimension. Living With War contains three groups of portraits of American citizens in relation to USA war missions during the past 30 years. The most recent pictures present people who demonstrated in 2006/07 against USA involvement in the war in Iraq. They are accompanied by shots made more than 15 years earlier of soldiers who were photographed shortly before their initial deployment in the first Gulf war. The third group of photos is from 1983/84 at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington. It shows individual portraits of visitors paying tribute to the victims of war in Southeast Asia. These close shots dont take sides with any particular political orientation. They simply tell how irreplaceable the individual is and how keeping his memory serves as the basis of human interaction. Judith Joy Ross, born in Hazleton, Pennsylvania, in 1946, studied photography at the Chicago Art Institute. She has received several awards and prizes, including the Charles Pratt Memorial Award, an Artist Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts and a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship. Ms. Ross lives in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.