Richard Misrach
Shorebreak Sextet, 2023
book object with 6 signed photographs
photos: 11.5 x 15.25 inches each, signed and numbered
portfolio: 12 x 15.75 inches each
minimum bid: $5,000
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Ansel Adams, a classical pianist as well as renowned photographer, compared the photographic negative to a musical score that can be interpreted/printed in numerous ways. John Cage, the avant-garde composer, compiled scores by numerous composers and artists and presented them as graphic art in the 1969 publication Notations. It is the merging of these two ideas, from these unlikely sources, that form the foundation for this project. Since 2006, coinciding with Richard Misrach's shift away from analog film to working exclusively with a digital camera, he has been interested in the negative image in photography as an aesthetic experience in its own right. Shorebreak Sextet, a unique book of original prints held in a laser-etched aluminum binder, brings together six recent images of oceanscapes that embody this approach to thinking about the negative.
Richard Misrach is one of the most influential photographers working today. For the past fifty years, he has used visually stunning, large-scale color vistas to address human intervention on the natural world. His best-known epic series, Desert Cantos—thirty-nine distinct and interrelated chapters about the western landscape—includes Border Cantos made in collaboration with the experimental composer/sculptor Guillermo Galindo. Dealing with the unseen realities of the US-Mexico borderlands, this show, organized by the San Jose Museum of Art in 2016, and reconfigured by the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, has, so far, traveled to 12 museums. Other significant series include Misrach’s Golden Gate study of weather and light, his exploration of the polluted cancer alley of Louisiana, his haunting documentation of the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, and his aerial views of ocean and beach in Hawaii. He lives and works in Berkeley, California.
