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" IF REALISM DIDN&amp;#039;T already exist as an artistic movement, Clifford Ross, fifty-two, would have invented it. He decided instead to outreal the realists--and pulled it off in one fifteenth of a second. That&amp;#039;s how long it takes to trip the shutter of the R1, the benign Frankenstein of a camera he created to capture perhaps the sharpest detailed images ever produced on film. Already an accomplished abstract painter and sculptor, Ross turned his attention to photography several years ago. In 2001, he tried to reproduce on film his vivid memory of Colorado&amp;#039;s Mount Sopris but found that it just wasn&amp;#039;t possible with a conventional camera. Three years later, Ross patented an awkward-looking device, fashioned in part from the body of a World War II Fairchild aerial spy camera, which creates images that make window mullions two miles away seem crisper than a bag of Fritos.  At 2.6 gigabytes when scanned, each picture is as data-heavy as the image of a cloudless Earth that NASA recently stitched together from thousands of satellite photos. The possible applications seem limitless. For example, Ross points out, ecologists photographing the environment &amp;quot;could see incremental change with an intimacy that otherwise just wouldn&amp;#039;t be available.&amp;quot; Ross does have several other subjects in mind. He may even shoot portraits. &amp;quot;Every single pore is there,&amp;quot; he says. &amp;quot;Depending on your point of view, it&amp;#039;s either staggering or frightening.&amp;quot; "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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