{"id":937,"date":"2011-08-06T18:11:52","date_gmt":"2011-08-06T18:11:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thesecretnewsonline.com\/?p=937"},"modified":"2011-08-27T22:32:01","modified_gmt":"2011-08-27T22:32:01","slug":"richard-misrach-a-focus-on-the-after-story","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.thesecretnewsonline.com\/?p=937","title":{"rendered":"Richard Misrach: A focus on the after-story"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Reprinted from <\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Richard Misrach: A focus on the after-story<\/h1>\n

August 1, 2011 1:00 pm by Tracey Taylor<\/a><\/h2>\n
\n
\"\"<\/a>Richard Misrach in his Emeryville studio where he has worked since 1976. Photo: Tracey Taylor <\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Richard Misrach is nothing if not patient.<\/p>\n

When, in 1997, the renowned photographer moved into a home in the Berkeley hills and decided to capture his new view of the Golden Gate Bridge, he didn\u2019t just take a few dozen shots and leave it at that.<\/p>\n

Rather, over the course of three years, he shot hundreds and hundreds of photographs. The result was\u00a0Golden Gate<\/a><\/em> [Aperture, 2005], 85 beautiful meditations on the iconic bridge seen through the seasons from a single vantage point on his front porch.<\/p>\n

Similarly, when Hurricane Katrina swept through the Gulf Coast in August 2005, Misrach took his time before making the journey to New Orleans to document it. He waited until October, after the turmoil and drama had abated, to capture images of a post-storm calm that were no less dramatic.<\/p>\n

But the most striking evidence of Misrach\u2019s self-discipline must surely be his decision to wait 20 years before revealing the fruits of one of his major photographic projects. It is only now that the photographer is unveiling \u2013 in some cases printing for the first time \u2014 the photographs he took in the aftermath of the 1991 Oakland-Berkeley Firestorm.<\/p>\n

His images will be shown at two exhibitions opening in October \u2014 at the Berkeley Art Museum<\/a> and the Oakland Museum of California<\/a> \u2013 scheduled to coincide with the 20th<\/sup> anniversary of the devastating fire.<\/p>\n

\"\"The Oakland-Berkeley hills in the aftermath of the 1991 Firestorm. Photo: copyright Richard Misrach <\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\u201cI didn\u2019t want to release the photographs straight away,\u201d Misrach says, speaking in his studio, a cavernous space in an artists\u2019 cooperative in Emeryville where he has worked since 1976.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe meaning of photographs changes over time,\u201d he says, explaining that he aims for his work to be the opposite of reportage or journalism. \u201cPhotographs can be really exploitative and I don\u2019t want to be part of a media circus. History shifts the meaning.\u201d<\/p>\n

Misrach concedes it\u2019s a gamble to wait for so long before unearthing work from storage.\u00a0Out of the some 40 images in the upcoming exhibitions, and the book that will accompany them, only five have been exhibited before, in 2005.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s interesting: I don\u2019t know what I\u2019ll see. And I\u2019ve forgotten the logistics \u2013 was it three days after the fire when I took the photos, or four?<\/p>\n

\u201cBut it feels right,\u201d he continues. \u201cThe photographs are more poignant now.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"One of the images that will be on show at two local exhibitions this Fall. Photo: copyright Richard Misrach <\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Misrach speaks in the same vein about the images he created of the eerily empty streets of New Orleans two months after the hurricane had careened though.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am attached to Louisiana and didn\u2019t want to be part of a spectacle,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Granted a press pass by The New York Times Magazine<\/em>, Misrach took a small 4MP Canon Powershot\u00a0digital camera and shot most of the photographs almost on the hoof, a far cry from his trademark approach of using an 8 x 10 camera to produce painstakingly composed photographs that emerge as large-scale prints.<\/p>\n

\u201cI took 2,000 photos on the fly \u2013 sometimes from the car. It was the after-story, and it was post-apocalyptic,\u201d he says. A number of images taken with a bigger camera have yet to be released.<\/p>\n

The photographs, published in Destroy this Memory<\/a><\/em> [Aperture, 2010], show the messages that officials and homeowners spray-painted onto houses, cars and scraps of board after the storm \u2014 whether to record the extent of the devastation or in reaction to it. The scrawls \u2014 warnings, pleas, even jokes \u2014 show a very human response to ruined lives.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>This photograph, of a melted tricycle, will be presented in Misrach’s signature large-scale format. Photo: copyright Richard Misrach <\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\u201cI am here, I have a gun,\u201d reads one; \u201cHelp! Help!\u201d another; \u201cLooters shot \u2013 survivors shot again,\u201d is written in capital letters on a piece of plywood propped up against a tree; \u201cRIP Thomas Burke, aka Tab,\u201d is marked in blue chalk on a boarded-up garage.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey are like primitive text messages,\u201d Misrach says. \u201cPeople\u2019s graffiti showed both anger and humor and together they built a narrative.\u201d<\/p>\n

Misrach gifted full sets of the New Orleans prints to five museums and donated royalties from the book to the Make it Right Foundation<\/a>.<\/p>\n

He has also donated two full collections of the Berkeley-Oakland firestorm images to the Oakland and Berkeley museums that are exhibiting them this fall.<\/p>\n

Misrach\u2019s Berkeley roots go deep. He cut his teeth working with photographer Roger Minick<\/a> at the ASUC Studio, a student arts facility at UC Berkeley from where he graduated in 1971.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe first time I saw photographs as art in the studio I knew that\u2019s want I wanted to do,\u201d he says. \u201cRoger held my hand. He was 22 and I was 19 but he seemed \u2018so old\u2019 to me. I looked up to him like a father figure.\u201d<\/p>\n

Misrach recalls how he started by working as a lab assistant at the studio \u2013 \u201ca glorified janitor\u201d he clarifies \u2014 mopping floors and cleaning up chemicals so he could use the facilities for free once the lab was empty at night.<\/p>\n

\u201cI would work from 11 p.m. through the morning,\u201d he says. \u201cThey were lean times, I was house sitting and living in a van.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Misrach captured the devastation caused by the Firestorm. Photo: copyright Richard Misrach <\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Misrach\u2019s first book \u201cTelegraph 3am\u201d<\/em> [Cornucopia Press], black-and-white shots of street people taken on Telegraph Avenue, was published in 1974.<\/p>\n

He went on to produce a highly regarded body of work \u2014 shooting in deserts at night, on the parched Bonneville salt flats, and in Mississippi\u2019s Cancer Alley \u2013 his lens always focused on man\u2019s relationship with nature, and bringing a socio-political edge to all his images<\/p>\n

Misrach is considered one of this century\u2019s most acclaimed photographers and is work is represented in more than 50 major museum collections around the world.<\/p>\n

These days, the huge prints propped up around his studio and stacked flat in layers, like so many outsize millefeuilles, bear\u00a0testament\u00a0to the fact that he is experimenting. He says he has not used film for the past three years, and is working with digitally scanned negatives. \u201cI\u2019m moving from representational to experimental. I like the kind of work that always stretches me.\u201d<\/p>\n

The politics and culture of Berkeley, where he lives with his wife, the writer Myriam Weisang Misrach, have affected him profoundly, he says. Some of his earliest photographs were taken while he was being tear-gassed at anti-war riots on the Cal campus in 1969.<\/p>\n

\u201cBeing in Berkeley was critical. My interest in aesthetics and politics merged and have been fighting each other ever since,\u201d he laughs.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf it weren\u2019t for Berkeley I would be doing pretty landscapes.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201c1991: Oakland-Berkeley Fire Aftermath, Photographs by Richard Misrach\u201d<\/a> is at the Oakland Museum of California, October 15, 2011 through February 12, 2012, and\u00a0at the Berkeley Art Museum<\/a>, as well as a companion exhibition, \u201cRichard Misrach: Photographs from the Collection\u201d, from October 12, 2011 through February 5, 2012. An accompanying exhibition at OMCA will allow visitors to share their memories of the Firestorm. <\/em><\/p>\n

The complete set of Telegraph 3 a.m<\/em> is on view at Pier 24 in San Francisco<\/a>.\u00a0Many of the images from \u201cDestroy This Memory\u201d are currently on view at SF MOMA in its \u201cFace of Our Time\u201d exhibition<\/a>.<\/p>\n

(To comment on this story, click on headline to go to story page, then scroll to bottom).<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n<\/div>\n