Daycare Behind Bars

An Interview With Photographer Richard Ross

by Stephanie Washburn

Richard Ross is a photographer, researcher, and professor of art based in Santa Barbara, California. In his most recent work, supported by a grant from the Annie E. Casey Foundation, he turns a lens on the placement and treatment of American juveniles. You can see the full project at Juvenile-in-Justice.com. His work will begin exhibiting across the country this fall.

Q. Tell us about Juvenile-in-Justice.

A. I’ve been exploring the world of incarcerated kids. They have the least voice of anyone on the planet. There are not a lot of folks who advocate for them, and the system is often unjust.

Q. Your previous work concentrated on photographing physical spaces–museums, bomb shelters, institutional architecture. Why the shift to people and policy?

A. I had been doing a lot of things without people, so I wanted to do something with them. I can do a beautiful photograph. But I also realize that there’s a beauty in an imperative to action. Art for art’s sake, look how clever I am, etc.–I just get tired of it. Doing something that might change people’s thinking has become really thrilling for me.

Q. Does a beautiful picture get in the way, then?

A. No. I like having a photograph that is composed in terms of color, light, texture. It’s like advertising, they’ll stay with you for a bit. It is just a better solution than pontificating.

Q. Some of these juveniles are serving life sentences and will be literally invisible to society for their entire adult lives. Can you talk about making the invisible visible?

A. I went to Florida and met a kid who, when he was 13, was allegedly involved in a horrendous crime–carjacking and gang rape. He’s been held in Miami for almost four years, and he hasn’t had a trial. His mother tried to stab him to death. No charges were brought against the mother, who, by the way, has been a crack addict for 30 years. And the kid was living on the street. The judge won’t allow mitigating circumstances, and he’s looking at 30 years? Putting a kid away for life is just not appropriate. There are 74 juveniles in this country who have life-without-parole sentences for crimes they committed when they were 14 or younger.

Q. So do you think of this project as advocacy?

A. Yeah. Even the most neutral observers are advocating something. Although I try to position myself as just putting out facts, I know I’m full of shit.

Q. But it’s important to try?

A. It’s important to try and be honest with people.

Q. Your work has been exhibited internationally and published in numerous books. How has the new media landscape changed the outlets you’re pursuing for this project?

A. I tried to go the normal route to publish a book. I was in discussions with Aperture, and they pulled back. I was in discussions with The New Press, but there was no money unless I could guarantee a sale of 1,000 copies. Book publishing is very different from how it used to be. I’ve heard from several publishers that they don’t do work with political content. What the fuck are they talking about? If you are a university press don’t you have a responsibility? So they’re doing a book on lowland gorillas. If I put all my chips and ego there, I’d be in bad shape. That’s why I looked for another solution. Doing it as a blog, in a first-person voice, to frame the issues and discussion–it’s been really great.

Q. That format has allowed you to be go very in-depth. I think you’ve visited close to 300 prisons–as if you need the project to be exhaustive. What does quantity do for you?

A. The problem is you have to be suspicious of all the content you’re getting on the Internet. I think the quantity of my project gives me a certain credibility.

Q. You were required by law to make the subjects anonymous. How does this change what the images communicate?

A. Both legally and morally, I protect the anonymity. When you photograph somebody and his face is showing, it can become maybe a caricature, or a definition. From the back it has more of a universal quality and could be anybody. A lot of these kids, not all by any means but a lot, have been criminalized for pretty normal adolescent behavior–the war on drugs, walking while black.

Q. The isolation, even shame, seems more intense because of that anonymity.

A. Yeah, that’s often in the images, but I also think we project it. A lot of these kids just think of this as daycare.

Q. Unlike the images, the interviews are very personal. Can you talk about that contrast between how you’re using image and text?

A. I wanted you to understand what is going on with this kid. Each story is compelling. And everything interlinks. I have to help a viewer take the first-person story and look at it objectively and create multiple lenses. It’s difficult for me to figure out the construction. Making the decision to put the blog in the first person has been really exciting and much more intimate. It allows the person to be in the cell with me and the kid.

Q. I’m curious about the power dynamics involved in looking and being looked at as you’re working. Is it an uncomfortable process?

A. Yes. Absolutely. I go in and sit on the floor. I’m old, and have miserable scoliosis, and these rooms are concrete. And I sit there for half an hour so the kid has the ability to look down on me physically and knows I have no stature over him. I listen and take notes before finally taking the picture.

Q. Do you have a sense how the kids are thinking about the photographs? Do they want to see theirs?

A. Oh they all want to see them. They’re just teenagers and very dramatic. Anyone who is paying attention to them is great.

Stephanie Washburn is an artist based in Ojai and Los Angeles and a lecturer in the Department of Art and UC Santa Barbara.

*Photographs by Richard Ross.


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