Richard Ross is a photographer whose work has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The Los Angeles Times Magazine, Discover, Vogue, The San Francisco Examiner, and Frankfurter Allgemaine. A professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara, he is the principal photographer for the J. Paul Getty Museum on their Villa restoration project and the author of Waiting for the End of the World (Princeton Architectural Press, 2004), Patently Ridiculous (Plume Press, 2004), Patently Erotic (Plume Press, 2005), and Patently Christmas (Plume Press, 2005).

The photographs of Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib in this slideshow were taken in 2005 and are part of Ross's upcoming project, Architecture of Authority, an exploration of power, authority and security. The result of five-year study of asymmetrical architecture -- including classrooms, churches, mosques, offices, TV sound studios and prisons -- the project examines "how an inherently unequal conversation transforms to interrogation and how answers become difficult to obtain."

More of Ross's work can be seen at his Web site: http://www.richardross.net/