Richard Ross
Photography
Santa Barbara
A decade ago, Richard Ross had accomplished everything photographers dream of doing. A tenured professor at UC Santa Barbara, he had published several well-received books. The country’s most prestigious magazines and newspapers, including the New York Times Magazine, published his light-shot, lyrical images, which also were exhibited in museums and galleries.
Ross could have coasted to retirement. Instead, his work took on a new urgency, moving from aesthetic questions to the kind of photojournalism that can change the world, a pantheon inhabited by W. Eugene Smith and Dorothea Lange.
For the past five years, Ross has interviewed and photographed teenagers, and sometimes children, incarcerated in the nation’s juvenile justice system. From a Florida boy arrested at 13 and held for more than three years without trial to the mother of a 14-year-old who tells the authorities to Taser her son, Ross reveals the painful, dangerous world inhabited by nearly 100,000 young people in the U.S.
The disturbing news that the U.S. had the highest prison population in the world received international media attention, but few people have noticed the explosive growth in juvenile incarceration. That rate for juveniles in the U.S. is nearly five times the rate of South Africa, the next highest nation, according to a 2011 report by the Annie E. Casey Foundation. Yet most research shows that juvenile incarceration is expensive and often ineffective.
It’s hard not to feel compassion for kids as young as 7 or 8 years old who find themselves locked up. But the greatest strength of Ross’s work is his objectivity, an old-fashioned word that, in this case, is appropriate. Although he does not photograph the juveniles’ faces, Ross asks searching questions and lets the unvarnished answers speak for themselves. Rather than the media stereotype of youthful sociopaths, what emerges is a portrait of parental and societal abuse and neglect — and an opportunity for positive intervention, if the juvenile justice system can be reformed.
People are looking, and listening. “Juveniles-in-Justice,” the photographs and text Ross gleaned from traveling to 30 states and visiting 300 juvenile detention facilities, has been featured on PBS, NPR and in Harper’s Magazine. At UC Santa Barbara, Ross works with journalism and sociology professors on cross-disciplinary courses that focus on the juvenile justice system. These classes have received national attention, appearing on a PBS News Hour special on education.
Question:
Juveniles-in-Justice seems to have taken you over. We see the progression and how it grew from your previous work, but this one seems different from your others.
Answer:
I agree. I’m perfectly capable of making a beautiful photograph. I know that. But now I’m able to create something that goes beyond a gallery and that’s a hell of a lot of fun. When I sit on the floor of a concrete cell talking to a 12-year-old kid and I’m 64 years old, I’m incredibly privileged.
Question:
How does a project like this evolve?
Answer:
You start with a hypothesis; the idea that there is an issue. You test it by finding examples that might disprove it. In this case, it started with the evolution of the project I called “The Architecture of Authority.”
I was speaking to the prosecuting attorney for juveniles in El Paso, Texas. I asked if we’d ever see fewer kids incarcerated. He said, “Not as long as the state of Texas keeps on making 10-year-olds.” So I asked, “Is having a 10-year-old within this system judicially or morally effective? Does it make sense?”
Question:
Your earlier work is very aesthetic, very lyrical. 'Museology,' a backstage look at museums all over the world, is delightful and humorous. Is there a connection between this earlier work and these powerful, disturbing images in Juveniles-in-Justice?
Answer:
I think they’re all about feeling like I’m a surrogate for a broader audience. I can get to places they don’t get to. I did a series on bomb shelters, for instance. I’m the eyes you can have exploring your weird aunt’s attic.
Question:
Some of the facilities you show are appalling, tiny, concrete boxes, and the thought of a young kid spending 18 or 20 hours a day in there feels like Abu Ghraib, which you also photographed. Are there any states that do a good job with juveniles?
Answer:
Missouri is a model that everybody points to: a system that deals with juveniles humanely and effectively. Kids wear their own clothes. They are treated with dignity, in a normalized living space, so they’re not put in concrete rooms and fed through a trap.
Question:
Your father was a New York City police officer. Yet police officers are usually viewed as the heavy hand of authority, which is what you've been critiquing.
Answer:
Being the son of a cop doesn’t throw me to talk to a gang member. I understand that a gang may be a structure of their life that’s a skeleton system. The tattoos may be the bones that hold him up when the family has failed him. I don’t demonize him. And I can talk to the police. I can say, help me understand this, I’m an outsider here. That’s the reporter in me. But it’s also recognizing that the cops, like the kids, deserve better than being taken at face value.
Question:
And being the son of a cop, you've come up against conflicting ideas about justice.
Answer:
I teach my students that justice is about being respectful to everybody. A friend that I teach with, Victor Rios, said the core of justice is dignity. We had a speakers series here at UCSB that included Amos Paul Kennedy, Jr. who calls himself a “humble Negro activist printer.” He said the way he thinks of justice is kindness. That contradicts what we often think of as the biblical image of heavy-handed punishment.
Question:
The kind of punishment these kids often receive at society's hands?
Answer:
If you treat these kids with kindness you can change lives. The harsh, punitive approach to juveniles began in the 1990s, with a media frenzy about “super predators,” kids as young as 9 or 10 portrayed as ruthless sociopaths. This led to kids being charged as adults, which now happens in most states. You’re consigning these kids to oblivion. When kids are charged as adults they don’t get education. But if they’re in a juvenile institution, you have a possibility of helping them.
Question:
R.F., the boy in Florida, was arrested at 13 and the text with your photo originally told us that he waited three years and four months without a trial. The photo was shown on television recently. Has his case moved forward as a result of the publicity?
Answer:
No, not yet. It’s now three years and 10 months. The Sixth Amendment gives you the right to a speedy trial, but it’s not happening for R.F. I put together a video on him, and we’re updating his blog entry on the website every month.