If a picture is worth a thousand
words, I still favor my images over adjectives, nouns, and verbs. Photography
is like a language to me and it is my strongest form of communication.
My peers in grade school mocked
me because I had a stuttering speech impediment. One day, a teacher gifted me a
disposable film camera and I immediately began to weave visual moments together with
every day characters in my surroundings. The photos, arranged chronologically
as stories, prompted me to speak clearly in front of my class during “show and
tell” with no shame. That’s when I fell in love with the power of photography.
Growing up in my father’s
non-denominational church, memories like the smell of wooden pews, the taste of
communion, and the heat generated by enthusiastic worshippers, shaped my acute
sense of awareness. I witnessed the outpouring of raw emotions by people of
different cultural backgrounds at religious ceremonies across the southeastern
U.S. My 6 siblings and I, bunked together in 3 bedrooms, became fast friends
with strangers invited home from services. The generosity of my parents allowed
perceived foreigners going through hardships to live with us for months.
Inevitably, through these encounters my spiritual reverence and worldly
curiosity was born.
Nearly 15 years later, I left a
successful, yet unfulfilling career in engineering, marketing, and small
business development to start a photography business. Sparked by a genealogy
search for my multiracial roots and to quell my thirst to learn about people on
the opposite side of the globe, photography once again became my platform to be
heard and understood.
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Ross Oscar Knight is an American
artist who has an intense passion to understand humanity one photograph at a
time. He combines his curiosity of universal love and spirituality to fuel his
thirst to explore different cultures. Knight has the ability to observe and
distill human emotion down to its very essence. His strength in communication through
imagery was born out of his childhood speech impediment. Since he believes life
is lived in moments and not in poses, mobility and time travel are recurrent themes
in his work. Whether in rural Alabama or a remote village in Africa, he uses
his camera as a tool to forge new relationships and to frame stories ever-present
in people’s lives.
Knight is a member
of the Professional Photographers of America and his images have appeared in
various forms of media around the world. Notably, CNN, Oprah Winfrey, HGTV, the
NBA, Forbes, Fox Business News, and LIVESTRONG have featured his photographs.
The photo stories he produces have received interests from 20th Century Fox and
Lifetime Television. As a philanthropist he supports cancer research and as a
speaker he teaches 3 photography workshops annually. His goal is to Build Community Through Photography. Knight will publish his
first book in 2012 containing selections of his work from the past 10 years.
Ross and his wife, Brandi, of 4 years reside in metro Atlanta with their 3 year
old Weimaraner, Bauer. The couple is excited to be expecting their first child
this September.
