Abby Ross is young and very hard working. I attended the opening of her first solo show, an event she essentially single-handedly put together last month at 92Y in Tribeca, Manhattan and which featured these images. They were taken during her recent travels in Senegal, capturing the people, landscape, and mood of the region.

"I've often been attracted to this essential energy that shines through where the spiritual far outweighs the material. I am interested in the poetic character of things, in the small, seemingly unimportant. There is hidden beauty in the ordinary, and great beauty in the overlooked. Little things are big, less is more. Imperfection is beautiful. Paradoxes such as these fascinate me." Abby Ross, October 2010