"These photographs are about decay, the earth breaking down," Misrach says. "To think
one can photograph something like deep space or erosion is counter-intuitive, it pushes the
way we think about the longer issue of time."

The history of place is also seen in
Misrach's richly colored Cancer Alley
photographs.

Here, landscape is a view of the Mississippi
River when the flood waters merge
with toxins from a nearby Dow Chemical
waste land -- a haunting image of human
abuse and neglect.

Born in Los Angeles, CA, Richard Misrach
received a BA in Psychology from the
University of California at Berkeley.

His photographs have been widely exhibited and published and are in the collections of more than 50 major institutions, including the Whitney Museum of American Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art and The Museum of Modern Art, all in New York; the National Gallery of Art, Washington; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; the Victoria and Albert Museum, London; and the Musée d’Art Moderne, Paris.

Misrach is the recipient of numerous awards including four NEA Fellowships, the PEN Literary
Award and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship.

Image credit:

Richard Misrach
Hazardous Waste Containment Site, Dow Chemical Corporation, Mississippi River, Plaquemine, Louisiana, 1998
Chromogenic color print
40 x 50 inches
Image courtesy of the Artist
Courtesy of the High Museum of Art, Atlanta, GA.

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