Ross William Hamilton
Before the start of his journalism career, Hamilton’s work was exhibited in the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, The Art institute of Chicago, and a variety of galleries in the Chicago area. Born in New York City, January 1952 to theologian William Hamilton and Mary Jean Golden, (New York City Ballet, 1948 1st company, corps de ballet.) Hamilton grew up in Rochester, NY, became interested in art and photography via trips as a child to the George Eastman Museum, the MOMA, The Metropolitan Museum and the Guggenheim Museum in NYC. Each trip to the City included the ritual of being placed by his father in front of Picasso’s Guernica and Van Gogh’s Starry Night in MOMA. Next, a walk to The Metropolitan Museum and gaze at Rembrandt’s self-portraits. Also, Yankee Stadium, another eventual source of visual wonder and photographic inspiration.
Upon graduation from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1974, Hamilton, in collaboration with friend and fellow SAIC classmate Curt Fisher produced “Face to Face” (a book of disguise). They were awarded the Fred J. Forster Fellowship. Fisher, through the use of foam latex prosthetics, locations, proper props and costumes, Fisher became eighteen different characters. The photographic documentation tried to stay true to the various photo processes, formats and approaches of the times the characters existed in. The photographs also, can be thought of as disguise.
After the SAIC fellowship exhibition “Face to Face” was included the March 1975 Museum of Contemporary Art’s “Body Works” exhibition which included early work by Lucas Samaras, Chris Burden and Laurie Anderson among others. Then, in an abbreviated and loosely reimagined form, the August 1975 Playboy Magazine pictorial. MCA’s curator Ira Licht, brought the work and the two young artists to a conference room inhabited by bunch of Playboy Magazine content editors in the hope the magazine’s book publishing arm would publish Face to Face as a photo/art book. The nude woman character is what sold them on publishing it, but that image and excerpts from other characters ended up as a three-page pictorial feature in the magazine.
In June of 1978 an offer to pick up some photo assignments, (with no guarantee of a full-time job) for The Oregon Journal, tempted Hamilton who left Chicago and thus began a 34 year career as, eventually, a staff photographer on The Oregonian. The years as a photojournalist became essential to the growth of these bodies of work: Baseball Culture, It’s a Girl!, It’s A Boy!, Animal(s) and Musical Artists.
