For four decades Richard Misrach has been one of the most significant and influential photographers of the American landscape. Along with major projects in Hawaii and Louisiana, he is best known for his monumental epic, Desert Cantos, a multifaceted study of our political, cultural and environmental relationship to the natural world. Misrach has had one person exhibitions at the National Gallery of Art; the Art Institute of Chicago; The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA); the Centre Georges Pompidou amongst others and has been collected by museums worldwide. There are over 25 monographs devoted to his work, including Crimes and Splendors: The Desert Cantos of Richard Misrach (The Museum of Fine arts, Houston, 1996); Chronologies (Fraenkel Gallery, 2005) and On the Beach (Aperture, 2007).
Misrach’s museum exhibit, Border Cantos, a collaboration with experimental composer Guillermo Galindo, traveled to the San Jose Museum of Art; Amon Carter Museum of Art, Fort Worth; Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art; Pace and Pace MacGill Gallery, New York; Samek Art Museum; and the Missoula Art Museum. The exhibition and the accompanying publication – Border Cantos (Aperture, 2016) – explored complex issues surrounding the US-Mexico border through Misrach’s photographs of landscape and objects left behind by migrants, together with Galindo’s haunting musical instruments, sound installations, and scores. Recently works from Border Cantos have in included in two group shows: When Home Won’t Let You Stay: Migration through Contemporary Art at The Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston; and Crossing Lines, Constructing Home: Displacement and Belonging in Contemporary Art at Harvard Art Museums.
