75 Years of Photography
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"Why do you spend so much of your time on photography," asked a friend once, "considering that you have never earned a substantial portion of your income from this pursuit? What is it that drives you?” Is it that I often feel my scalp tingle when I believe I have achieved a perfect shot? Is it the fun of gadgeteering (which I confess I have enjoyed since the age of 10, working my way through numerous cameras and lenses and supporting equipment)? Is it ego, hoping to elicit praise from others for the final image? (It's a great pleasure to be told that you have created something beautiful, or even just nice. Nothing like praise to motivate you, or derision to make you want to give up entirely.) Perhaps it is the desire for immortality, yet that probability is remote, particularly since everlasting quality is currently impossible to guarantee, even while many engaged in this field are hoping that such immortality might someday be achieved. Is it the desire to impart a special message of some sort to the viewer with the final image? If that is the case, broadcasting the image to as many individuals as possible would be a corollary concern, with credit going to the photographer who not only has something worthwhile or inspirational to say, but who also has developed the best marketing skills for getting the image around. Does this somehow detract from the work of many thousands of photographers who do good, even great, work, but just keep it to themselves, or certainly haven't posted it online to be measured by the number of recorded hits? Several centuries ago, the ability to derive stimulus from appreciating the work of others was limited to admiration of the work available in a specific location. Today, through print, radio, television, and the internet, and the ability to travel globally, the range of stimuli available to an individual is enormous. I find this new availability both exciting and discouraging: exciting because of the admiration you can feel for the excellent work you may view … but discouraging if you feel you yourself may not have created work of similar merit! Is it a desire to share with others the feeling that the photographer may have experienced and been able to preserve in the finished photograph? I would like to think that comes closest to my own personal objective.
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About the Book
Immersed in the flourishing Greenwich Village arts scene of the 1950s, Spencer Ross studied photography with some of the most famous mentors of that period. Soon his own work received accolades. U.S. Camera magazine named him one of “the young lions of photography.” His photograph “Street Scene in Siena” is considered by some to be one of the finest street photographs of that era. For the next six decades, Ross traveled the world on business to 130 countries and he always took his camera along. His street scenes and nature photographs from those travels have hung in over 100 museums and galleries including the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the IBM Gallery.
In this volume, you can see over 250 of Ross’s arresting images: stunning street photography, memorable portraits of men, women, and children, extraordinary photographs of our natural world, haunting landscapes, and memorable abstracts, accompanied by Ross’s observations about the images, his travels, and the creative process. Ross reflects on the increasing sophistication of cameras from their earliest days to 35mm technology, along with the ubiquity of today’s smartphones and their effect on the photography world. He reminisces about his mentors and significant influences and muses about photography as a fine art. “Though hardly reality itself,” says Ross, “the still photograph has an uncanny ability to preserve an image with an intensity which can equal or even surpass the experience of the moment. A photograph can mystify, elevate, transmute, imbue, and influence. All these possibilities and more are available to those practitioners who maintain an appropriate respect for the potential of this medium and a sufficient knowledge of the craft.” The photographs in this collection do indeed reflect Ross’s aspiration: to create works of lasting value.
As you’ll see in this book, Spencer Ross can tackle a sunset, explore flowers in the field, and come up with beautiful beach scenes, but where do I think he really shines? As a street photographer myself, I cannot help being wowed by many of his street photographs: the kids playing in the streets of Belgium, or his photo of a portrait photographer on the streets of Athens, like a mirror of his eye-to-eye view of the world. An interested and interesting world traveler, he roamed around with his camera in hand before street photography even had a name. This worthy book is filled with Ross's life’s work and it serves photographic history well.
- Ken Farrell