Pensacola native turns seeker’s eye on world


  • November 9, 2013
  • /   Shannon Nickinson
  • /   community-dashboard
Ross Oscar Knight’s life and work are about seeking.

As a youngster at Scenic Heights Elementary, his stutter drew the kind of mockery that students can raise to an art form.

His search to discover the history of his own multicultural family led him to build a niche photographing the weddings of mixed-race couples.

And his search for a way to link art with ethical behavior and community responsibility led him to travel the globe, lecture at Emory University in Atlanta and organize this year’s Knight Photo Walk, set for Nov. 9 in Washington, D.C.

Now based in Atlanta, Knight is building a portfolio that makes him an anthropologist and an artist, using his gift to build cultural awareness through destination, wedding and fine-art photography.

In 2007, Knight left corporate America, where he had built himself a nice niche as an engineer by training, working with marketing and small business development. When he was a student in the International Baccalaureate program at Pensacola High School he wanted to be a photographer, but “people told me there was no money in that, and I listened.”

“I enjoyed a lot of the work, but … I felt like I was being stifled, like someone was holding me underwater.”

He traded his sport jacket for a jacket he made himself with the word “photographer” emblazoned on it. Wearing the “uniform” of a photographer helped Knight bring his dream into reality.

“I started wearing my challenge on my chest,” he says.

Wedding photography might not be thought of as the glamour job, but, Knight says, “the thing about weddings is this: It is recession-proof. People are always going to get married and want to celebrate that.”

In searching for his niche in that frilly, pastel-shaded curly-cue covered world, Knight found himself drawn to the story behind the couple; how they met, how they join their separate families, traditions and cultures together.

“It’s me and my curiosity about customs and traditions, so I started focusing on interracial weddings,” he says.

At weddings, people are happy, and open to telling you all of their family stories. In listening to those stories, Knight builds trust with his subjects and finds the compelling narrative behind the celebration.

Recently he began to think about returning to Pensacola to exhibit some of his work. From Oct. 3-30, a collection of his work from his travels in India — his favorite travel destination to photograph — were on exhibit at the First City Arts Center on North Guillemard Street.

Knight has been three times and most loves visiting the coastal areas near the Indian Ocean, spending time with the fishermen, a sign maybe that a true Pensacolian is happiest near the coast.

“I just find that I my senses are so awakened there.”

Exhibiting at First City matched his affinity for venues that connect art to the community, though certainly he has had his work shown in large galleries. His fine art exhibits, for example, include food from the country highlighted in his art, music and the like.

Meredith Doyen, executive director of First City Arts Center, said welcoming a native son for his first local exhibit was a perfect fit for the center’s first event featuring an outside artist.

“It’s just perfect for the kind of things we want to do here, community building through the arts,” she says.

When students from the private Dixon School for the Arts heard about the exhibit, they called the Arts Center to see if a field trip was possible.

“They told us, ‘We like his story. We’ve been talking about him,’ ” Doyen says.

The students had the best time, Doyen says, and were able to see the exhibit, explore the gallery and expand on their classroom lessons through Knight’s images.

Knight also spoke to a group of students at Pensacola High, where his goal was to tell them “where there’s a challenge, there’s an opportunity for growth,” drawing on his own experience.

“I made myself a little vulnerable. I talked about when I used to stutter, and when I was made fun of and picked on about my racial identity. I talked about when I had to leave sports to focus on on my academics because … I realized I wasn’t going to be Michael Jordan.”

As they search for their place in the world, Knight told them to be open to discovering their gift — and to be prepared for the possibility that that gift might not present itself until they are older.

A cousin of Knight’s wrote a book that traced their family history back six generations through a mix of white, black, Native American and French cultures. The book and his search for where he fit into the family legacy, “helped me to accept and be proud of who I am.”

To this day, when he comes home to visit, his dad will take him to places in town and say, “I used to not be welcomed here.”

Times have changed, and while Knight hopes that Pensacola will grow and more fully embrace diversity, he loves the multiculturalism Atlanta offers.

“The opportunities, I feel like, are limitless here.”

On Saturday, Nov. 9, Knight will again explore the link between art and community in the Knight Photo Walk at the National Mall as part of a group of about 100 photographers who built a community first through Flickr, then on Facebook. The event is free, but donations will be accepted to benefit Five Talents, a nonprofit based near D.C., that gives microfinancing loans in Africa, Latin America and Asia.

His wife, Brandi, also has made service a part of her professional life. She was a breast cancer researcher but now teaches biochemistry at Morehouse School of Medicine and runs a program for students who are at-risk of leaving college that aims to help keep them on track and in school.

Next up are plans to self-publish a book for and inspired by their 14-month-old daughter.

Knight’s next big trip will take him to Cambodia and Vietnam, where he will continue hunting up images that will transfix his viewers.

“I want people to be placed in the moment. I want them to see the movement, feel the atmosphere, as if they were there.” [progresspromise]
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