July 18, 2024
Richard Misrach
Dancing With Nature
Marc Selwyn Fine Art
June 22 - August 3, 3024
Richard Misrach
Richard Misrach has had a long career as a photographer. He has documented the American west, the detritus of Hurricane Katrina, the devastation from the Berkeley fires as well as artifacts left by migrants along the U.S. Mexico border. The color photographs that make up his Desert Cantos series (begun in 1979) are poetic meditations on expansive spaces and the night sky. He is interested in natural beauty as well as human interventions in the landscape, often combining both in single images. Actual humans occasionally appear, as in his On the Beach series from the early 2000s. The tiny swimmers in these pictures are often surrounded by vast expanses of ocean that become patterns and colorful abstractions dotted with anonymous figures — an uncanny juxtaposition.
Though at first wedded to traditional approaches to photography, Misrach has migrated to and embraced digital technologies and now uses software like Photoshop and non-darkroom printing to make his recent digital works. In December 2022, Misrach and thirteen dancers from the Alonzo King LINES Ballet company traveled to Hawaii where they spent five days improvising along the oceanside cliffs. The images were used by the company for a 2023 performance and now appear in the exhibition Dancing With Nature. The large-scale color photographs are presented both as positive and negative images.
The negatives are unsettling and mysterious. As positives, they are breathtakingly spectacular. The images celebrate the fluid and graceful movements of the dancers in contrast to the jagged volcanic rocks. They are positioned against light blue skies that meet deep blue-green seas. As the dancers improvised, Misrach captured instants that ebbed and flowed in relation to the environment. These moments appear other worldly and spiritual as the dancers' arms and legs point up and down, directing the viewer's eyes around the composition.
In Adji and Shuaib (Cellphone #1), On the Cliffs, Spitting Cave (all works 2022), two dancers appear quasi-silhouetted on a plateau above the ocean. A break in the clouds above allows the sun to peak through and illuminate a spot of ocean at the horizon line, just below the dancer's extended hand. Maddie and Adji, On the Cliffs, Spitting Cave #1 similarly captures their bird-like gestures — a spreading of the arms as if wings and a desire for freedom expressed by the dancers.
When presented as negatives, everything changes. The figures and their shadows become light and ghost-like, the landscape unrecognizable. Misrach indulges in these differences and even exhibits the same image in both formats. Shadow Ballet #8 and Shadow Ballet #8 reverse depict a line of dancers from above holding hands along the waters edge. Their elongated shadows hug the footprint laden sand which extends above them. The water parallels the underside of the human chain. Not only does Misrach present this image in reverse, it also hangs inverted from how it was shot to create an even greater disorientation.
In a brochure that accompanies the exhibition, Misrach speaks about the beauty of the human form in play with the environment. Despite global warming, or the state of the world, or the war in Ukraine, Misrach sees this body of work as hopeful and a celebration of beauty and positivity. Though much of his work has been political and "heavy," here the lightness of the body in relation to the cliffs and the sea is seen as liberating.
Dancing With Nature
Marc Selwyn Fine Art
June 22 - August 3, 3024
Richard Misrach
Richard Misrach has had a long career as a photographer. He has documented the American west, the detritus of Hurricane Katrina, the devastation from the Berkeley fires as well as artifacts left by migrants along the U.S. Mexico border. The color photographs that make up his Desert Cantos series (begun in 1979) are poetic meditations on expansive spaces and the night sky. He is interested in natural beauty as well as human interventions in the landscape, often combining both in single images. Actual humans occasionally appear, as in his On the Beach series from the early 2000s. The tiny swimmers in these pictures are often surrounded by vast expanses of ocean that become patterns and colorful abstractions dotted with anonymous figures — an uncanny juxtaposition.
Though at first wedded to traditional approaches to photography, Misrach has migrated to and embraced digital technologies and now uses software like Photoshop and non-darkroom printing to make his recent digital works. In December 2022, Misrach and thirteen dancers from the Alonzo King LINES Ballet company traveled to Hawaii where they spent five days improvising along the oceanside cliffs. The images were used by the company for a 2023 performance and now appear in the exhibition Dancing With Nature. The large-scale color photographs are presented both as positive and negative images.
The negatives are unsettling and mysterious. As positives, they are breathtakingly spectacular. The images celebrate the fluid and graceful movements of the dancers in contrast to the jagged volcanic rocks. They are positioned against light blue skies that meet deep blue-green seas. As the dancers improvised, Misrach captured instants that ebbed and flowed in relation to the environment. These moments appear other worldly and spiritual as the dancers' arms and legs point up and down, directing the viewer's eyes around the composition.
In Adji and Shuaib (Cellphone #1), On the Cliffs, Spitting Cave (all works 2022), two dancers appear quasi-silhouetted on a plateau above the ocean. A break in the clouds above allows the sun to peak through and illuminate a spot of ocean at the horizon line, just below the dancer's extended hand. Maddie and Adji, On the Cliffs, Spitting Cave #1 similarly captures their bird-like gestures — a spreading of the arms as if wings and a desire for freedom expressed by the dancers.
When presented as negatives, everything changes. The figures and their shadows become light and ghost-like, the landscape unrecognizable. Misrach indulges in these differences and even exhibits the same image in both formats. Shadow Ballet #8 and Shadow Ballet #8 reverse depict a line of dancers from above holding hands along the waters edge. Their elongated shadows hug the footprint laden sand which extends above them. The water parallels the underside of the human chain. Not only does Misrach present this image in reverse, it also hangs inverted from how it was shot to create an even greater disorientation.
In a brochure that accompanies the exhibition, Misrach speaks about the beauty of the human form in play with the environment. Despite global warming, or the state of the world, or the war in Ukraine, Misrach sees this body of work as hopeful and a celebration of beauty and positivity. Though much of his work has been political and "heavy," here the lightness of the body in relation to the cliffs and the sea is seen as liberating.