Elliot Ross was born in Chicago in 1947. He received a Master of Fine Arts degree and Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the San Francisco Art Institute in 1971. His work has been exhibited internationally and is in collections in the United States and abroad, including those of the Bibliothéque nationale de France, Paris; the Center for Creative Photography, Tucson; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; and the Musée de la Photographie, Charleroi, Belgium. His early, conceptual, process-oriented photography was included in the influential 1974 exhibition "Light and Substance," curated by Van Deren Coke. His project "Animal" has been featured in fotoMAGAZIN (Germany) in its "Masterpieces of Photography" series, in Foto & Video (Russia), and in a number of other publications. His critically acclaimed books Animal, Other Animals, and Crows Ascending were released by Schilt Publishing (Amsterdam) in 2010, 2014, and 2024 respectively.