Judy Gelles received her MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design and holds a Masters in Counseling from the University of Miami. Her work is held in 25 permanent public collections including the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the LA County Museum of Art. She exhibits widely including LA’s Skirball Cultural Center and the National Portrait Gallery London.

Judy Gelles began her photographic career by documenting her life as a mother with two young children. Early on she began to add text to her photographs, a practice that has endured throughout her career. Gelles continued to work with feminist themes exploring her family history and her own life. When her sons went off to college, she expanded her focus but continued to use the personal to explore sociopolitical themes.

Gelles has received many awards including a Pennsylvania Council on the Arts Grant, a Rhode Island State Council on The Arts Grant, a William Penn Foundation Grant, an Independence Foundation Grant, and a MacDowell Colony Residency. Gelles has taught at Boston College, Tufts University and the University of the Arts, Philadelphia.

For the last decade, Gelles has been working on The Fourth Grade Project. She began the Fourth Grade Project in 2008 from a prototype born during my volunteer work at a Philadelphia inner-city school not far from where she lives. Gelles has interviewed and photographed over 300 fourth grade students from the USA, China, Dubai, England, India, Israel, Italy, Nicaragua, St. Lucia, South Africa, and South Korea. Gelles ask each student the same three questions: Who do you live with? What do you wish for? What do you worry about? Told in their own words, their stories touch on common human experiences and urgent social issues.

The mission of the Fourth Grade Project is to share the hopes and fears of fourth graders from around the world to foster empathy and understanding. The project aims to transform perceptions by connecting students from cultural or socio economic backgrounds different from their own.