Richard Misrach

In the early 2000s, Richard Misrach (born 1949) began a series titled On the Beach, a body of work that traveled extensively and has been highly influential. These color photographs deal with the human figure seen at a distance, on an unspecified beach or in the water, observed from an unsettling and difficult-to-identify point of view located high above. Misrach has continued this work, while vast changes in photographic technology over the intervening decade have caused a shift in approach, both conceptually and technically. Untitled is an artist book based on two photographs: the one made by Misrach and the other made concurrently, at the time of exposure, by the subjects of his photograph. The extreme detail explored in this work concisely summates both the artist’s concerns and the ubiquity of digital technology as we are portrayed and portray ourselves.

Richard Misrach, one of today's most prolific contemporary masters, is internationally renowned for his carefully considered, beautifully rendered epic works. In On the Beach, a lavishly produced, oversized monograph that features the long-awaited publication of this spectacular series, Misrach hones in on our delicate relationship to the sea.
Light, color, and form are crucial components in Misrach's explorations of difficult subjects. In this body of work he uses a gorgeous, slowly shifting color palette gleaned from changes in depth and tide; abstract patterns of waves and rippling water, and beaches both empty and cluttered. Throughout the series, Misrach carefully balances the minutiae of human gesture against the massive scale of the sea. In some images, a lone figure floats in a liquid field of brilliant turquoise--or in others, lies beached and partially buried. The details in the images are frequently ambiguous. Are the figures relaxed or drained of life? Cavorting in the surf or panicking in the riptide? The balance is a fragile one between control and surrender to the elements. As Misrach says, the work is "suffused with a sense of the sublime, but it also begins to expose our vulnerability and fragility as human beings."
At 20 x 16 inches, On the Beach is the largest book ever published by Aperture, and also the first major publication of new work by Misrach in many years. It accompanies a major touring exhibition, with stops in Chicago, Honolulu, Seattle and at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.--a venue that very rarely shows the work of living artists.

Richard Misrach is among the most influential, prolific and internationally recognized photographers working today. Best known for his epic ongoing project, Desert Cantos--an extensive and unique photographic exploration of place--Misrach consistently addresses political and social issues through the adaptation of different photographic strategies, even as he expands notions of traditional landscape practice, and builds a complex and poignant document of American culture. His subjects have included manmade floods and fires, military bombing ranges, mass graves of dead animals, sublime night skies and details of paintings housed in the museums of the Southwest. In one recent series, On the Beach--which was inspired by Nevil Shute's postapocalyptic novel of the 1950s--Misrach's color photographs deal with the human figure seen at a distance on an unspecified beach or in the water, observed from an unsettling and difficult-to-identify point of view located high above. Misrach's newest publication, Chronologies is a compelling study of the photographer's process over the past 30 years. Stripped of their original context, the photographs--presented in chronological order--illuminate how the photographer thinks and works. Through fits and starts, reiterations and detours, the work evolves and matures, weaving in and out of the series for which Misrach has become known. Side-by-side, classic images and never-before-seen pictures flesh out the photographer's logic and complicate it at the same time. Ultimately, Chronologies is about time: The span of 30 years, the importance of time in each photograph, the chronology of a life within its time, and the book itself as a timepiece.

Aperture is delighted to reissue Richard Misrach's highly acclaimed publication, Golden Gate. The photographs for Golden Gate were made over a three-year period from a single vantage point on the artist's front porch, overlooking the San Francisco Bay. Photographed at all times of day and night, in every season, the pictures reveal an astonishing range of changing weather, light and color. The rigorous execution of a simple premise brings a fresh appreciation to this famous western vista. Misrach's photographs are illuminated by important essays by noted art historian T.J. Clark and geographer Richard Walker. Geoff Dyer writes of the work: “We are in the presence of that uniquely photographic and uniquely American phenomenon: the documentary sublime. [Golden Gate] takes you, metaphorically and literally, as far west as you can get. Just as Frederic Edwin Church's colossal “Niagara” (1857) still surpasses the iconic familiarity of the location, so Misrach's pictures make us see an overphotographed subject in a new light; literally. But the light that shrouds, frames, drenches and (always) dwarfs the bridge is also historical. It is as if the sky of every one of the paintings on show at Tate Britain has, at some point, ended up in the Bay Area... Church's rainbow even turns up in one of them. All--even the ones that are completely abstract, just air, color, light--attest to a verifiable truth: at that moment it really looked like this. We have arrived at a vision of the sublime that is literal and absolute. It is impossible to go any further.”