Ramell Ross

RaMell received his Bachelor’s degree from Georgetown University and an MFA from Rhode Island School of Design where he received a Presidential Scholarship and the T.C. Colley Award for Excellence in Photography. He has exhibited domestically and internationally and publication list includes the New York Times, The Washington Post, ESPN, Business Week, and Penguin Group. He is a 2014 recipient of the Garrett Scott Documentary Development Grant as well a Sundance Institute Grant for his upcoming film, Hale County. iHome, 2012Ron, 2013 Hale County Hale County, Alabama has been my second home since late 2009 when I arrived to manage an youth program. I have photographed in the community for over five years, working collaboratively with former students and negotiating issues of representation while pursuing a more personal investigation of Blackness and the Historic American South. I must reconcile my ideas of the individual and the archetype while navigating my status as both an insider and an outsider. As I construct 4x5 images I consider the iconic use of the African American body and use recumbency, gesture, gaze, and the actions of obstruction and concealment to incite interpretation and access to my fiction. There is a great associative power in our pigment that is a reflection of its viewer’s perceptions and perspective. We are all implicated in the perpetuation of stereotypes: socially, ghastly, hospitably, creatively, in our cultivated imaginations. I ask, how do the tropes of skin charge the decoding of the images? Shaquan, 2012Landscape, 2012Giving Tree, 2012Ida Mae, 2012Yellow, 2012Brothers Z, 2012Ladrewya and Michelangelo, 2012Dakesha and Marquise, 2012Antonio, 2012Speaker, 2012Magic School Bus, 2013Sleep Church, 2014Weekend, 2013 To view more of RaMell's work please visit his website.