Watch Photographer Captures Young Faces of Juvenile Detention on PBS. See more from PBS NewsHour.
The PBS Newshour aired an interview Thursday with noted photographer and regular Bokeh contributor Richard Ross. For the last five years, Ross has been visiting youth detention centers across the United States, more than 300 so far, and documenting what he sees.
In addition to his photographic work, part of a project he calls Juvenile-in-Justice, Ross has interviewed more than 1,000 detained youth. Recently, Ross also visited juvenile detention centers in Canada.
Speaking with JJIE in October about his motivation Ross said, “I wanted to give a voice to the people that I thought had the least voice in our society.”
He continued, “I want people to look at these juveniles as people. Consider that most of them are here due to a collapsed economic, social, educational and family system. You have to look at society as a whole and use that to contextualize what these kids did to get into these institutions.”
Ross’ photographs can be seen as part of an ongoing series on JJIE’s arts page, Bokeh.