ReturnDonald Ross

Donald Ross  began a career in advertising photography with the J. Walter Thompson Agency in 1935. In 1952 he retired from advertising to devote the next forty-five years of his life to his personal photography while supporting himself and his family by designing and constructing houses. Ross used an 8x10 camera, frequently working alongside close friends Edward and Brett Weston. Known for the superb quality of his prints, Ross participated in over thirty solo and group exhibitions between 1948 and 1991. Beginning in 1978 five portfolios of his photographs were published. In the Introduction to Portfolio Four,  Dody Weston Thompson called Ross “… one of those who not only look, but see. Aphorist, realist, individualist, and craftsman, he has gone quietly along being his own man, a photographer’s photographer. Like all artists worth their eyes, he worked until he got it simple. Then he worked.” Education:  University of Texas, 1930–1934; California School of Fine Arts, 1946.Selected Exhibitions: San Francisco Museum of Art 1948*; Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, 1953*; American Academy of Arts & Sciences, Boston, 1953*;  Perceptions, San Francisco Museum of Art, 1954; Creative Photography 1956, University of Kentucky Art Gallery, Lexington, KY; Photography U.S.A.: National Invitational Photography Exhibition, De Cordova Museum, Lincoln, MA, 1962; Photography U.S.A., De Cordova Museum, 1969; Photo Gallery International, Tokyo, 1980*; The Monterey Photographic Tradition: The Weston Years, Monterey Peninsula Museum, Monterey, CA, 1986; The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, CA, 2007.

Selected Publications: Dody Warren, “Perceptions,” Aperture Vol. 2, No. 4, 1954; U.S. Camera Annual, 1955, 1956, 1957, 1961; Photography Year Book, Great Britain, 1958, 1959, 1961, 1963; The Heritage of Edward Weston, University of Oregon, 1965; Photography U.S.A., De Cordova Museum, 1968; At Mono Lake, Friends of the Earth, 1983; The Monterey Photographic Tradition, Monterey Peninsula Museum, 1986; Keith F. Davis, An American Century of Photography From Dry-Plate to Digital: The Hallmark Photographic Collection, 2nd Edition, 1999; B&W Magazine No. 5, February 2000.

Selected Exhibitions: San Francisco Museum of Art 1948*; Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, 1953*; American Academy of Arts & Sciences, Boston, 1953*;  Perceptions, San Francisco Museum of Art, 1954; Creative Photography 1956, University of Kentucky Art Gallery, Lexington, KY; Photography U.S.A.: National Invitational Photography Exhibition, De Cordova Museum, Lincoln, MA, 1962; Photography U.S.A., De Cordova Museum, 1969; Photo Gallery International, Tokyo, 1980*; The Monterey Photographic Tradition: The Weston Years, Monterey Peninsula Museum, Monterey, CA, 1986; The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, CA, 2007. *  Solo exhibition