Richard Misrach: Dancing With Nature

Richard Misrach: Dancing With Nature by Linda AlterwitzSeptember 18, 2024

“A lot of my work is heavy and political. This body of work was not. This is about that joy and beauty. You all embody that beauty and joy in a way that I have never seen before. I feel that your generation is so beautiful, so sweet, so brilliant and talented. You gave it your all. That’s our hope for the future.”

Richard Misrach in conversation with company dancers Adji Cissoko and Madeline DeVries on April 4, 2023.

Richard Misrach is well known for his photographs that deal with heavy contemporary issues focusing on humanity’s complicated relationship with the land. His many long-term projects examine the results of nuclear testing, manmade fires and floods, the borderlands between the U.S. and Mexico, and more. His photographs of the American West are often beautiful, yet pointed as they examine the fraught and often catastrophic changes humans have created that affect our natural environment.

In Dancing With Nature, we get a glimpse of a different Richard Misrach— one who captivates with beauty and joy despite an unsettling, uncertain world. It is evident that Misrach is making a conscious choice to focus on the good, on love and joy; especially at a time in our world where positivity and compassion are sorely needed.

In December 2022, I went to Hawaii with thirteen dancers from the Alonzo King LINES Ballet. For five days, I photographed them improvising and playing in the ocean and on the volcanic cliffs nearby. My images were used for the sets of the LINES 2023 spring premiere of “Let Not Your Heart Be Troubled”, with vocalist Lisa Fischer joining the collaboration. The following photographs are examples of the images I captured that week. Working with the dancers was so joyful and special—truly one of the great experiences of my life.

06_Adji and ShuaibCellphone, On The Cliffs, Spitting Cave

07_James, On The Cliffs,Spitting CaveReverse

08_Dancers,On The Cliffs, Spitting Cave 2

09_Dancers, On The Cliffs, Spitting Cave1

10_Adji and Shuaib, On The Cliffs, Spitting Cave1

11_Adji and Shuaib, On The Cliffs, Spitting Cave3

A champion of color photography since the 1970s, Misrach is known for his poignant, large-scale images that lean into social, political, and environmental issues of the present while also engaging with the history of photography. Subjects for his work have included desert fires, nuclear test sites, and animal burial pits in the American West; San Francisco’s iconic Golden Gate Bridge; and the landscape of the US-Mexico border. In his radiant, contemplative works, Misrach—who lives and works in Berkeley, California—often examines the destructive effects of human intervention in the natural world. Recent solo exhibitions by the artist include Dancing With Nature at Marc Selwyn Fine Art in Beverly Hills, California, his 2022 presentation At the still point of the turning world, 2002–2022 at Pace Gallery in New York and Border Cantos, which opened at the San José Museum of Art in California in 2016 and later traveled to the Amon Carter Museum of American Art in Fort Worth, Texas and the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas. His works can be found the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in California; the Centre Pompidou in Paris; the National Gallery of Australia in Canberra; and many other institutions around the world.

Tags: Community, Environment, Water