Richard Ross

Richard Ross is a photographer, researcher and professor of art based in Santa Barbara, California. Ross has been the recipient of grants from the National Endowment for the Arts. Ross was awarded the Guggenheim Fellowship in 2007 to complete work on Architecture of Authority. Ross's work has been exhibited at the Tate Modern, London; National Building Museum, Washington D.C; Santa Monica Museum of Art, Los Angeles; Aperture Gallery, New York; ACME.

Ross's first book, Museology, a photographic examination of museums and the display of art and historical objects, was published by Aperture Foundation in 1989 and features an introduction by Marcia Tucker founder of the New Museum and former curator at the Witney Museum of Modern Art.

He was the principal photographer for the Getty Conservation Institute and the Getty Museum on many of their architectural projects. He has photographed extensively for the Canadian Centre for Architecture, Nike, New York Times, Los Angeles Times, SF Examiner, Vogue, COLORS, Courier, and many more. books of his work have been published including Architecture of Authority (Aperture 2007), Waiting for the End of the World (Princeton Architectural Press 2005), Gathering Light (University of New Mexico 2001) and Museology (Aperture 1988).

He is a historian who writes history using images. Using a sacred, nearly extinct animal in a most disrespectful way was the norm for museums in older times. In fact human beings have displayed other humans in most disrespectful manners in museums. The bizarre notions of museum curators of the past fascinate this photographer. The photographer has captured the desire of people to stare at irreverence of lost life for their own amusement.

These displays are neglected and left to rot for numerous reasons but when photographed, they make a statement about our lack of care.

“My focus for this series has been on dusty, quiet corners – poignant and romantic looking places that are suffering from benign neglect. In newer museums, things look sterilised or sanitized. This rhino doesn't have an environment around him in the way he might in the American Museum of Natural History in New York. He’s more related to Victorian taxidermy. He looks forlorn.”

“I spent two weeks photographing  in the Musee National d’Historie Naturelle. It had been closed to the public for about 17 years. I took long exposures, and I would swear by the end of the exposure that things were moving. There was absolute silence. I’m very irreverent, but this was the closest I've gotten to a religious experience. It was a cross between that and the twilight zone.”