Clifford Ross: Photographs

Opening August 5th and on view through August 30th, The Drawing Room in East Hampton is pleased to present two recent bodies of black and white photographs by Clifford Ross, a long time resident of East Hampton. An ethereal sequence of views through a grove of trees at the edge of a lake and against the night sky are cropped from passages in large negatives Ross made with his patented R1 camera which achieves the highest resolution large scale landscapes in the world. Printing the negative image of the leaning trees and their lacy foliage as a positive, Ross’s contemporary methods harken back to the 19th century photograms of ferns by Anna Atkins and paper negatives of lace by Fox Talbot. Ross also presents a spectacular new sequence of archival pigment prints of hurricane waves which silence the crash and roar of the ocean’s most powerful roiling forms so familiar here on the East End.

In awe of the ocean since his childhood growing up at Georgica beach, Ross returns to water in its most dramatic moments and revels in each opportunity to stand up and “capture” the waves which knocked him over as a boy. Having long explored the digital imagery capture technologies, Ross’s research and practice have allowed him to mine the 21st century advances of the 19th century medium, preserving the best qualities of both. To create the Hurricane photographs, he stands waist high in the hurricane waves in a wet suit, tethered to friends on the beach. Indeed, with each closing of his shutter Ross freezes details, invisible to the naked eye, of the liquid motions and stunning shapes of the violent water. The contrast of realities between the perfect stillness of the image and the wild frenzy of the writhing subject is thrilling.

See below for full press release and selected works.