Clifford Ross: Grain Series
The simple gray skies that were in the horizon series, as well as the simple gray and black tones in the Hurricanes were the underlying inspiration for the Grain series

When I tore off the front of my enlarger and photographed the light, the only subject left was obviously the light and the grain of the film, that's where the grain series name came from.

It's actually the silver grain that's suspended in the emulsion of the negative

And in way, calling it the Grain Series is just a simple statement to say the subject here is the medium itself.

Now, there was something rhythmic, almost mesmerizing about the sameness of these quiet images with small surf. It was a lot of clean blue sky, although these were black and white photographs, shall we say clean gray sky.

And ultimately I began to realize that the antidote to the hurricanes was in front of me, what was this gray sky? The gray sky is just a patch of gray, why do I believe that's a sky? Or why does the viewer?

And I began to think about what was the essence of this whole me and the waves and photography. I suddenly thought "gee, it's really about tones of gray, and I thought wouldn't it be interesting to try to get to the truth of my experience with hurricanes or the Horizon Series by going deeply into the medium itself."

Was there some way to rest from the medium of photography an experience that in some way echoed my experience of the ocean and that element of nature.

It was a beautiful technical challenge, the hardest thing to print in the dark room is a pure gray tone. There's a lot of dodging and burning you have to do in a pure gray area, so there's always the technical challenges of art making.

At the time I started, it was an exercise, it was you know what's the purest photograph I could make, and then once I did it, could I turn it into something that was art, that was meaningful?