From Our Archives: Richard Misrach
Richard Misach, Protest sign, Brownsville, Texas, 2014 ©Richard Misrach, courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco, Pace/MacGill Gallery, New York and Marc Selwyn Fine Art, Los Angeles.
This interview originally appeared in Musée Magazine Issue 18: Humanity
Andrea Blanch: Your collaboration with Guillermo Galindo, Border Cantos, was recently exhibited at Pace Gallery as well as being published in a book by Aperture. Can you tell me the story behind this project?
Richard Misrach: I’ve been doing these things I call Desert Cantos. They’re basically chapters of a long poem. They’re portraits of the American desert and American culture that I started in 1979 and that I’ve been working on periodically ever since. I would wander around in my Volkswagen and just see what I discovered. I never really had any predetermined ideas. And one day, in 2004, I was wandering and I saw what’s called a water station; it’s a big blue barrel sitting in the middle of nowhere in the desert. It was summer, when it’s a hundred and ten or a hundred and fteen degrees, really hot, and there was a blue ag coming out of it. At the time I didn’t know what it was. It was so surreal to nd that in the middle of nowhere. I photographed it with my 8x10 camera and just put it away, put it in my archive of mysteries to be solved later. Then, in 2009, wandering around the desert working on my projects, I started noticing that the border wall along California and Mexico was being militarized and expanded. There was construction, drones, and new technology. Surveillance cameras were being put in and it peaked my interest. So I started photographing the border wall and I began making more Cantos. I just wandered from the Pacific Ocean in California all the way to the Gulf Coast of Mexico. It’s about three thousand miles of border. I started exploring different areas of the border to see what I could find.
AB: Were you doing these Desert Cantos before you met Guillermo?
RM: Yes, this is before I even met Guillermo. I met Guillermo, I think in 2011, in San Francisco. He had been collecting things along the Texas border and building instruments out of them. He was performing on these instruments at the pop-up magazine where we met. I was making a different presentation, but I was really interested in the fact that I had found and photographed these human effigies---sculptures made from migrant clothing that I found along the border---and he had made musical instruments out of migrants’ objects and clothing as well. I thought, “Wow, this could be a really interesting collaboration.” So I invited him to my studio and, you know, he hadn’t heard of my workand I hadn’t heard of his-- we didn’t know each other-- but I had these big prints of the effigies aroundthe studio that really resonated with him, and we’ve been collaborating ever since.
Richard Misrach, Wall (with boot and El Doctor Jivago), San Diego, 2013 ©Richard Misrach, courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco, Pace/MacGill Gallery, New York and Marc Selwyn Fine Art, Los Angeles.
AB: The book is deeply thoughtful. The whole project is awe-inspiring but I feel sad when I look at the book. The photos are at once beautiful and disturbing. I’m wondering how you felt after going out with your camera for a day. What was your average day like? Did it affect you emotionally in any way? Because, for me, it usually doesn’t when I’m out photographing, but then when I come home I’m left with something. Do you agree?
RM: Right, and it’s interesting. I wonder about this all the time; about war photojournalists or people who are photographing people dying. I think it’s like being a brain surgeon. You’re doing a job.You’re not thinking, “Oh, I’m opening up this person’s brain and their guts are spilling out.” No, you think, “I’m doing a job,” and you stay focused. But when I’m out there photographing it’s disturbing for sure. I see a lot of things that are disturbing, but I put that aside so I can get the job done. This is something that human beings can do. People sometimes have to set aside their emotions and do the job at hand. And then I come back and think about it. A lot of stuff has haunted me and disturbed me and, you know, you try to reconcile the work that you do and make it positive. When I sell work I try to give money back to these organizations. We do fundraisers and things like that because the work isn’t detached from the reality.
Richard Misrach, Effigy #11, near Jacumba, California, 2012 ©Richard Misrach, courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco, Pace/MacGill Gallery, New York and Marc Selwyn Fine Art, Los Angeles.
AB: You have agreed in the past with Roland Barthes’ statement that, “the camera is a clock.” How, if at all, does Border Cantos function as a timepiece?
RM: For me, after almost 50 years of being a photographer, the images I’ve made really domeasure particular moments in time. Every photograph in a sense corresponds to a specific instance in my life. So the camera functions as an existential clock, if you will. And my pictures at the border, standing in front of a particular wall, a particular human effigy, a particular slashed water bottle, do the same: they call forth an exact moment. We all have that experience with family snapshots and albums,I think. On another level, the border project itself, and all of the photographs cumulatively, reflect this historical moment. They are another measure of time, another kind of clock.
AB: Guillermo is an artist who finds music in both objects and images. In your opinion, do yourphotographs possess a sound, or are they inherently silent?
RM: Definitely silent. They are a foil for Guillermo’s sound pieces, and vice versa.
Richard Misrach, John Doe, pauper’s grave, Holtville, California, 2013 ©Richard Misrach, courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco, Pace/MacGill Gallery, New York and Marc Selwyn Fine Art, Los Angeles.
AB: How did you like collaborating with Guillermo?
RM: I had only collaborated with another artist once before, Kate Orff for Petrochemical America which was a great experience, and obviously a very different project. The thing is, and I was talking to Guillermo the other night about this, you can decide you want to do something collaboratively, but if it’s not the right match it’s just not going to work. So you’ve got to be lucky. The fact that Guillermo and I met at that event and it all came together is kind of remarkable. I mean, again, I knock on wood. Now the project is over. The last show just came down in New York at Pace last week, so that part of our relationship is over and we’ll go do our different things. I cannot help butre ect upon how lucky I was to collaborate with Guillermo. We were like two jazz musicians riffing off each other for four years.
AB: Do you truly believe that objects contain the “animus” of the humans that once possessed and used them, or is this a purely metaphorical aspect of your and Guillermo’s work?
RM: I think for Guillermo this is a more literal experience going back to his Meso-American roots. You’d have to ask him. For me, I do not literally experience the animus of each object per se,but every single object I nd is valuable. Every object holds a mystery, suggesting a journey and an ordeal. Some people refer to these belongings as “trash.” I find them precious and heartbreaking. I think both Guillermo and I have felt a responsibility to present, and represent, each object with respect and careful consideration.
For the rest of this interview, check out our 18th Issue, Humanity
Richard Misrach, Wall (post and wire mesh), Douglas, Arizona, 2014. ©Richard Misrach, courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco, Pace/MacGill Gallery, New York and Marc Selwyn Fine Art, Los Angeles.
