I’m fascinated by the ways in which male police culture criminalizes Women as pathological, being’s, which I’m sure many from this series of found and appropriated photograph’s are. Though many images are of women sex worker’s, I wanted to restore each women’s dignity and identity by adding makeup and color to individuate the women so they wouldn’t disappear into the problematic and often corrupt criminal justice system in America, where women are notoriously violated and perpetually unsafe. Most of the images are American, though some are British and many are Australian of course.
I also struggle as a woman from the horrific “suicide” of Sandra Bland and Countless other women often arrested for traffic violation’s, which we’ve seen time and time again in the horrifying police brutality we’ve now seen time and time again, too many horrific episodes to count! Breonna Taylor is another murder by the hands of the yet another compromised police department in Louisville, Kentucky. There’s been so many incident’s of police brutality and horror that not only has the public lost all trust in the institution of modern American police work, I as well as a dark brow Native American woman have not only lost all faith in them, unfortunately I was racially profiled by a young White cop and arrested and spect a night in jail for being one day late on my registration! I had just purchased a new car and because my mother was sick with cancer I wasn’t sure if I was going to remain in the state I currently lived in then, or if I would have to move back to California to help her, which I ended up doing, but I want to point out that I had never even had a speeding ticket in my entire life, I was a 54 year old yoga studio owner and teacher and an artist. I was a long time volunteer at a local museum where I was sentenced to 500 hourse of community service at a museum I volunteered at for three years already. I was held without bail! This is how egregiously sick modern day policing is. What’s worse is that I was thrown in a cell with a man! Then later with four other lovely women all of whom were just like me, we were arrested without the possibility of bail for minor traffic violations! One woman had a cracked head light and didn’t even know it! I’d like to point out that one of the most painful accounts of police brutality if one can even begin to compare each horrific account from the next was for me in Memphis when Tyre Nichols. His disgusting, repugnant murderer’s, all but one of them African American, the hardest part of this story was the most heinous of all and please keep in mind, I’m a civil liberties activist. I’m the granddaughter of a biracial leftist civil rights couple, activism is in my blood. When Trayvon Martin was murdered, I felt as if I had witnessed a modern day lynching, which is exactly what it was! I contacted attorney Benjamin Crump and spent hours on the phone with him and his staff because I could not wrap my brain around what had transpired. Ben actually asked me to share my very strong letter of activism regarding my feelings that this case was about specifically the ‘maligning of African American’s”, which is exactly what it was. Now, look at the horror’s that have since unfolded, this coupled with the myriad mass shootings, there is a serious problem in this country that is so far beyond repair I fear that I often think of leaving the country for good, even though I am a true American, the violence in this country has become so severe and yet the far right MAGA extremist’s want to make the AR15 a symbol on the American flag. This country may no longer represent my core values, which are non violent Quaker values. I will add that after my own brush with police incompetence bordering and brutality since they threw me in a cell with a man, I called the FBI and had a fabulous agent meet me with me because I was traumatized, very traumatized and she conducted a full blown investigation into the infamously troubled State Police where I lived who were already being invested for several other very serious transgression’s. Then I had my friend’s at the ACLU do a full scale investigation of the jail, they too were cited for multiple violations. As my dear friend Bill of the ACLU had the best joke in the world about putting a liberal in jail but I can’t remember it, I’ll post it later if I think of it. There is something profoundly wrong in this country not only with the American Police Force, who by the way are so heavily militarized now, more than half of them especially those cops who kill, are Vet’s from the Gulf and the Middle East who have untreated PTSD and the only work they can get and we are now discovering, they are the worst candidates for is policing work. The overt militarization of the police really began after these Vet’s returned home and could only get work in this field, while never being appropriately screened and treated for PTSD, they were and some still are ‘killing machine’s” just look at the heavily armored police vehicle’s since post 9/11, especially between the years of 2004 up until now, this type of police car is now the standard “police work” became normalized and is currently the status quo.
I enhanced these images and accentuated one’s that appear to have an underlying theme of mental illness, another reason women are incarcerated, rather than treated. On the humorous side, I fell in love with many of their names, Birtha Mayhem, and Bubble’s MaGoo! The images made me very curious about their lives, about domestic abuse where women have been forced to take protective measures in their own hands especially when these images were taken, as mostly all domestic violence cases were dismissed completely and most of the survivor’s were labeled as histrionic and hysterical, and some shot their husband’s in utter self defense. I wanted to give these women the dignified formal portraits they deserve.
Here is the fabulous review written about my work in this series:
By Carmela Brunetti, Art On World, February 27, 2022
Lady Criminal’s is an art project, created by Camille Ross, which is part of the trilogy dedicated to the photographic elaboration of of the female figure portrayed by Selfies and transformed with Avatars into a feminine universe all to be rediscovered. Camille Ross projects us into a photographic language with an introspective character to explore. The visual journey we present in this publication is original, in some ways disturbing, because the choice to interpret the faces of America’s female criminals is not only of great historical value, but of great cultural and iconographic interest. Critics and the public are judges who give their opinions on the provocative works that artists present in the international art scene, and in this case as editor I can only state the following, “Camille Ross is a great photographer who with her third eye penetrates reality and presents. Reality and presents it to the public by manipulating it with new media . Here games of nuance, of distortion of the image are the PUNCTUM’S of her new photography. Her photographic research is a new way of contextualizing the female figure in the era of globalization. “The projects the Selfie that we will present in the second volume are, as she explains the elaboration of the self”. As if to emphasize that in her works we perceive the alteration of the “self”, this makes us reflect on the emergence of new technological monsters. In the iconographies we encounter in the pages of the book we notice how the little considered across all ethnic groups, the chase for eternal youth, exaggerated beauty, lead to the death of the self. Thus a lack of self-regard is accentuated. A catalytic and provocative element naturally prevails in these works, which is respect for the human being. Her works refer us to sociology, to the history of man and his existence.
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