Over the past four years, I have interviewed and photographed 140 fourth grade students from a wide range of socioeconomic and cultural backgrounds in China, India, and multiple areas of the United States. To conduct the photography and interview sessions, I spent one week at each of seven very different schools. Subtle differences in each child’s personality and cultural background were revealed through their poses and facial expressions in the resulting images.
Awards Judy Gelles received her MFA in photography from the Rhode Island School of Design and her Masters in Counseling from the University of Miami. Her work is in major collections including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Brooklyn Museum of Art, and the Museum of Modern Art in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. She has had residencies at the MacDowell Colony, the Visual Studies Workshop, and the Atlantic Center for the Arts. Awards include a grant from the Lomax Family Foundation, an Individual Artist Grant from the Rhode Island state Council On The Arts, an Independence Foundation Fellowship in The Arts, a Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation Artist as Catalyst Grant, a grant from WYBE Public Television, a Philadelphia Stories New Program Grant, and a Fleisher Challenge Artist Exhibition. In 2009, Critical Mass listed her as one of the top 50 photographers in the US. Her work has been featured in Ms. Magazine; Vision Magazine, Beijing, China; Camerawork; New Art Examiner; Artweek and Photography Now.
