Show and Tell

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Ⓒ E. Aaron Ross 2024

Soft Reflections

Soft Reflections is a series of images made by shooting long exposures of a monitor with internet porn playing on it. Each photo is a single video, with the length of the exposure determined by the length of the video. The title of the photograph is also taken from the title of the video (with the length in minutes and seconds added to the end). The photos are shot onto 4×5 film using a large-format view camera, allowing the lines of the screen to be visible upon a closer look.

Archival Inkjet Print
40" x 60"

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Ⓒ E. Aaron Ross 2024

First and Last - Side View

First and Last

Alphabetically sourced images from the Fisher Fine Arts Library at the University of Pennsylvania. These two images were pulled from the first artist with a book of their work (Marina Abramovic), and the last artist with a book of their work (Lynette Yiadom-Boakye), and a double cheeseburger in between (minus the top and bottom bun), also bought on campus.

Glass, clear silicone, xerox images, double cheeseburger
2019

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Ⓒ E. Aaron Ross 2024

Every Double Digits Mass Shooter in the USA from February 1984 - February 2018


Every Double Digits Mass Shooter in the USA from February 1984 – February 2018


22 sequential exposures onto a single 4×5 negative. Image by accumulation, not algorithm. This is one of three pieces made shortly after the school shooting in Parkland, Florida in February of 2018.

Archival Inkjet Print
40 x 50"
2019

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Ⓒ E. Aaron Ross 2024

To Touch The Face of God

This video uses the Challenger disaster of 1986 as a jumping off point for thinking about the intersection of nationalism, death, desire, love, ideology, and popular culture. The relativistic and cyclical way tragedy is consumed and reproduced by all of us, day in day out, as not just a process of the news cycle, but of each individual as we internalize the events relative to our identity—constructing our own narrative of the event, filtered through our experiences, beliefs, and preconceptions.

Like the Challenger disaster, which was caused by a known weakness (a small flaw that was normalized and routinely dismissed), innate flaws within ourselves and the systems we create bubble dangerously just below the surface.

The photo below is a related piece made from another YouTube video in the same year.

American Flag Waving in a Blue Sky with High Wind [10 Hours]
Long exposure of YouTube video playing on screen, shot on 4×5
Archival Inkjet Print
40 x 60”

Sources include audio from the album "The Shape of Punk" to Come by the Refused, celestial recordings of radio emissions from space, "I Will Always Love You" by Dolly Parton, excerpts from a 1986 episode of Punky Brewster, TV static, a 10 hour YouTube video of the American Flag waving, dead mice in my kitchen, and stop motion animation made in residency at a junk yard in Philadelphia.
2019

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Ⓒ E. Aaron Ross 2024

Oh, Love That Will Not Let Me Go

As part of an ongoing series, years ago I began approaching family members and asking them if they know a song that I might know also–something we can sing together. When performing this exercise with my grandparents, I decided to remove myself from the equation and allow them to sing with one another. The resulting songs, mostly religious, speak to my Grandpa’s 40 year career as a minister, and my grandparent’s complicated relationship with what was their faith. The video and photograph (of the same title) were made in response to this audio, and shown in proximity to one another in exhibition.

HD Video, Archival Inkjet Print
14" x 18"
TRT: 5:00
2019

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Ⓒ E. Aaron Ross 2024

Soaked (Installation)

Soaked is an ongoing project using black, unwanted, punk and hardcore shirts that have been grown out of literally or figuratively. These shirts are collected from friends and people in my community, as well as from my own closet. The shirts are then bound and soaked in my urine for several weeks or months to produce the transformation—a technique that references both the processes of photography and the heavy exchange of bodily fluids that occurs at punk shows. This installation was at The Ice Box in Philadelphia, PA in 2019. *** ZINE NOW AVAILABLE FOR PURCHASE – CLICK HERE ***

Discarded punk and hardcore shirts, bottles of artist's urine, bottles of urine after soaking in shirts, ziplock bags, rubber bands, latex gloves, Devil's Ivy, "Boys Like Me" (TV, DVD/VHS player), inkjet prints, zines
2019

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Ⓒ E. Aaron Ross 2024

Soaked (Zine)

***NOW AVAILABLE FOR PURCHASE – SEE BELOW***  Soaked is an ongoing project using black, unwanted, punk and hardcore shirts that have been grown out of literally or figuratively. These shirts are collected from friends and people in my community, as well as from my own closet. The shirts are then bound and soaked in my urine for several weeks or months to produce the transformation—a technique that references both the processes of photography and the heavy exchange of bodily fluids that occurs at punk shows.

Each shirt featured is sized on the page according to its actual size, with a front view, bac view, and detail on the adjacent page. The collection so far has been archived into three separate zines. The following spreads are select excerpts from all three. The models for this work are self-identified fans of punk and hardcore.

Discarded punk and hardcore shirts, artist's urine, ziplock bags, rubber bands, models, zine
8" x 10"
2019

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Ⓒ E. Aaron Ross 2024

This Is My Body, Which is For You
This Is My Body, Which is For You
This Is My Body, Which is For You - phone photos
This Is My Body, Which is For You - end

This Is My Body, Which is For You

After the cake was revealed, I asked for help to place and light the candles. We then sang a song before collectively blowing them out. As one person pointed out, there was a significant exchange of bodily fluids in this process. I cut the cake and asked each person which piece they would like. The final image is what they chose not to eat.

Cake, frosting, edible image, trick candles
10" x 14"
2018

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Ⓒ E. Aaron Ross 2024

Approximating the Noise Floor

In the center of an otherwise dark room is an all white overhead projector on a black A.V. cart. An unknown number of blank transparencies sit on its glass surface, stacked until they hit the lens. Due to the noise floor of the medium of transparencies, they consume and contain the available light. By the time the stack hits the top, the lens is blocked and prevented from projecting forward. The floor becomes the ceiling. The mirror, which usually bounces the image outward, now only gazes back at the viewer blankly. Contact microphones, which are moved and manipulated during the performance, are attached to different parts of the body of the projector with sticky tack, which acts as both an adhesive and a conduit. The sound is sent through a looping pedal and mixer, which splits the signals between multiple speakers around the exterior of the space, pointing inward, back towards the center and source. The sound is all consuming in its volume and describes the space as it fills it. The system is self-contained and all encompassing.

In sonic terms, the noise floor is the unwanted sound produced by the medium itself and the accumulation of devices used for recording. It’s the hiss of a cassette, or a record, a microphone, a set of television speakers, and even the hum of the room you’re recording in. It’s what masks any sounds that fall below it, and something you must rise above for your signal to register. This piece is a physical and sonic manifestation of that phenomenon, expanded into 4 dimensions.

This video is an excerpt of a performance, but also documentation of the piece in its other form–as an autonomous installation sans-performer.

Overhead projector, A.V. cart, blank transparencies, sticky tack, contact microphones, looping pedal, mixer, speakers.
2018

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Ⓒ E. Aaron Ross 2024