The American photographer Judith Joy Ross, born in 1946, has developed a very unique, often autobiographically motivated perspective on the everyday life of the average American over the past 30 years. In her home state of Pennsylvania, she visited schools she had attended herself and photographed today's students there. This resulted in a series of empathetic portraits that tell much about childhood and growing up, about mostly only nominal equality of opportunity, and about life in rural America. Ross gained attention in the 1980s with a series of portrait studies taken in front of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington. The psychological range of reactions and emotions reflected in the faces of the anonymous visitors to this memorial is impressive. Judith Joy Ross's portrait work has received numerous awards.