The MIT Press
2 total works
To photograph storm-tossed waves during a hurricane, Clifford Ross goes into the surf himself, deploying a wetsuit, flotation vest, and a rope that tethers him to his assistant back on the beach. The result is a series of stunningly dramatic black and white photographs that are among Ross's best-known works. This book collects for the first time the entire “Hurricane Waves” series (begun in 1996), presenting black and white tri-tone images of all eighty-four of the “Hurricane Waves” in the series, along with detailed close ups, and historical color images. It accompanies a landmark exhibition at MASS MoCA.
The photographs show waves arrested in mid-air but roiling with movement, offering a distorted mirror of the clouds above them, shooting up in an explosion of foam, folding in on themselves, rising tall as a waterfall. We know that the photographer is imbedded in their fury, but in the photographs there is no sign of any human presence. These astonishing images affirm Ross's commitment to the expressive powers of realism as well as to the most advanced possibilities of technology.
Texts by
Phong Bui, Jay Clarke, Orville Schell, and Joseph Thompson
Copublished with MASS MoCA (Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art)
Exhibition
MASS MoCA Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art
May 22, 2015—March 30, 2016
From the romantic, highly detailed realism of his large-scale “Mountain” photographs to multimedia pieces that embrace abstract forms drawn from close observation of nature, Clifford Ross's work is unlike any other. In 2002, Ross invented his R1 camera, with which he has produced some of the highest resolution single shot photographs ever realized. In a Ross landscape, viewers can spot a bird in a tree on a mountain a mile away. Ross's longstanding desire to reconcile realism and abstraction in his art intensified when he took up photography in the mid-1990s. This book offers the first comprehensive survey of his work, from large-scale, highly detailed landscape photographs to his latest “invisible art”—an augmented reality app for smartphones that reveals a hidden work within a work.
Seen & Imagined accompanies a landmark exhibition at MASS MoCA. Featuring 139 images, most of them in color, including such major Ross series as “Mountains,” “Mountain Redux,” “Harmoniums,” and “Digital Waves,” it is the first fine-art book to offer readers an augmented reality 3D “pop up” experience (through a free downloadable app) using their smartphones. Texts by noted writers and critics David Anfam, Quentin Bajac, Arthur C. Danto, Jack Flam, Nicholas Negroponte, and Jock Reynolds, comment on Ross's work, placing it within the history of art and technology, alongside an interview by Orville Schell with the artist.
Copublished with MASS MoCA (Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art)
Exhibition
May 22, 2015 - March 30, 2016