The Sky Book

by Richard Misrach (Photographer), Rebecca Solnit

Richard Misrach has redefined contemporary landscape photography with his images of the splendor and destruction of the American West. Each of his "cantos" considers another chapter in the epic story of humankind and the land. Far from the edenic pristine landscapes of early practitioners such as Carleton Watkins, Eadweard Muybridge, and Ansel Adams, Misrach's compelling and often troubling images of the American West pose important questions about human impact on the natural world. Beneath the remarkable beauty of Misrach's color photographs are scenes of floods, fires, nuclear testing grounds, dead animals, and the debris of society.The photographs in The Sky Book comprise Richard Misrach's most recent, most ambitious series, which transposes his narrative from the land to the sky. The images mediate between document and abstraction, reality and metaphor. Drawing on photography's documentary tradition, Misrach contextualizes each photograph with respect to time and place, rooting the celestial realm firmly in the earthly and political one. In this way, his images are reminiscent of the efforts of nineteenth-century expeditionary photographers to record the natural resources of the frontier. At the same time, Misrach's sky pictures are a quiet meditation and a study of ephemerality, light, and color. They evoke a legacy of abstraction in art and photography that includes Alfred Stieglitz's "Equivalents" and Mark Rothko's color field paintings.

Genres: Photography

131 pages, Hardcover

First published October 15, 2000

Reviews

[A · Rating 4 out of 5]

The concept for this book is extraordinary. Unfortunately, it is not easy to see the photographs as printed in a book. They should be seen on a wall, in an exhibition. The quality of printing diminishes the impact of the images.

However, there is a stellar essay by Rebecca Solnit. Her writing is always elegant and thoughtful. The etymologies are helpful, as are the notes on the night photographs.

[Cheryl · Rating 4 out of 5]

gorgeous. the sky raw and bare, or with stars, or with ethereal traces of clouds. the sky polluted and eerily beautiful and clear and clean. simple photos that make you take deep breaths. lovely.