Clifford Ross Photography: Outside Realism

Clifford Ross Photography: Outside Realism preview reception is tomorrow night at the Austin Museum of Art in Austin, Texas. The exhibition officially opens to the public on Saturday, Feb. 21. Ross will be giving an artist talk Saturday in the galleries at 3pm.

This is the first significant museum exhibition of Ross's work. The show includes 21 black and white and color photographs ranging in scale from billboard to notebook size images depicting waves and mountains.

Ross photographs scenes from over 7 miles away and is able to produce tack sharp images and clarity not previously achieved. He provides an immerse, you-are-there experience with 10 foot digital panoramic reproductions of the Rocky Mountains.



An artist and businessman, he recently became an inventor - of a camera unusual enough to capture the attention of serious scientists, including the kinds who work for the government, experimenting with nuclear fusion, space travel and spy systems. What grabbed them were photographs Mr. Ross took that allowed them to see with astonishing clarity a tiny footpath on the top of a Colorado mountain seven miles from the camera.

But with this camera that he concocted out of 60-year-old camera parts, mirrors, a microscope and other items - none of them digital - Mr. Ross has taken photographs on 9-by-18-inch negatives that when slowly processed by hand and digitally scanned contain 100 times as much data as the average professional digital camera.

The scientists studied blowups of these photographs, hanging on the walls of Mr. Ross's studio. "This is a different way of interacting with image, moving in until your nose is quite close," said Mr. Diegert, who demonstrated by doing just that.

Excerpt taken from a New York Times article written by Julie Salamon titled, "Tom Swift's New Camera, Ready for Space and Spies: Artist Turns Inventor".

"Dreaming Realities" Lecture and Opening Tonight at Trinity University

There is a wonderful lecture and exhibition opening happening tonight at Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas. Artists Jerry Uelmsann & Maggie Taylor will be lecturing in the Ruth Taylor Concert Hall. The lecture begins at 7pm and is free and open to the public. The lecture will be followed by an opening reception for their exhibition "Dreaming Realities" curated by Trinity Gallery Practicum Students. The exhibition reception begins at 8:00 p.m. in the Art Gallery, Dicke Art Building.

“Taylor’s personal style was developed while earning her master’s degree in photography at the University of Florida in the mid-1980’s. Earlier in her career, Taylor physically laid out her compositions and captured the collage on an old 4-by-5 inch camera. She went digital in 1996 and now lays the objects one at a time on a flatbed scanner, leaving the scanner lid up to prevent damage and to achieve a solid, dark background. Taking anywhere from a few weeks to six months, Taylor constructs her pieces by layering the scanned images, as many as forty per piece, to create a unique digital image. Using Photoshop, she delves into her own mind and brings disparate images and objects together to create fantasies of her own creation.” (from an article at Griffin Museum)

San Antonio is only an hour a way from Austin. If you are interested in photography especially photo-montage this is not a lecture and opening you want to miss.