From Our Archives: Richard Misrach: Contraflow
Richard Misrach, Wall (post and wire mesh), Douglas, Arizona, 2014.
This interview was featured in Issue no. 18 - Humanity
Andrea: 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?
Richard: For me, after almost 50 years of being a photographer, the images I’ve made really do measure 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.
Richard Misrach, Wire mesh drag, west of Presidio, Texas, 2014.
Andrea:I want to hear more about why it’s difficult for you to photograph people.
Richard: Again, I’m a little bit of a hypocrite here because my first book had portraits. And in the work I’ve been doing lately in Hawaii, you can see some faces very clearly when you make large prints. And I don’t get permission, so that contradicts what I was saying before. But after my first experience with Telegraph 3 A.M., I just felt like, inadvertently, the photographer has the power and the person being photographed does not, unless it’s a conceptual piece in your studio where the subjects are really involved. But in ninety-nine percent of cases, the photographer is laying a narrative over a person, and I don’t feel comfortable with that. There’s a lot of work out there that I take issue with even if I think it’s really important work and I’m glad that they’re doing it. Nonetheless, I feel like there are ethical questions about the way photographers use people in their portraits. If I were to photograph people along the border it would raise those issues, especially in places where people are suffering. It just didn’t feel right to me. So what I didn’t do was photograph immigrants coming over the border suffering. That’s one kind of portrait. The Hawaii portraits are showing people at ease in nature. I think most of them would not be embarrassed or unhappy with the way they’ve been portrayed. In addition, I think that often the implication of people, their absence as presence, can be a more effective way to contemplate an issue.
Richard Misrach, Protest sign, Brownsville, Texas, 2014.
Andrea: Can you say more about your work in Hawaii?
Richard: I go back and forth between the desert and Hawaii because it kind of cleanses the palate, if that makes sense. It helps me see fresh when I come back. And, again, the pictures are more about humanity in the bigger sense than the individuals. The ocean to me is a really amazing place. I took my first pictures of people floating in the ocean after 9/11 and after looking at those people falling from the towers. I saw this place in Hawaii and thought, “Oh my God, it’s the same thing.” On a larger spiritual or conceptual level, it’s the same feeling. It’s the idea that in this vast sea we’re so small.
Richard Misrach, Home using border fence as fourth wall in Colonia Libertad, Tijuana, Mexico, 2014.
Andrea: Your series On the Beach and The Mysterious Opacity of Other Beings, which were both taken in Hawaii, frequently depict individuals floating on the water. From the aerial perspective that you take, the humans appear minute, insignificant, and delicate. Their arms are open and their bellies are exposed, so they seem submissive to the force and vastness of the water below them and the air above them. I’m wondering what effect you think the ocean has on human presence and, in general, what draws you to photographing this “landscape.”
Richard: What I first started noticing when I started The Mysterious Opacity of Other Beings was that one person would just throw themselves into the sea and start floating. It looked like they were giving themselves over to something and it was a beautiful gesture. And then I realized that it’s a universal gesture. Sometimes you’ll notice one person jump in and then you’ll see down the beach that more and more people are doing the same. It’s nonverbal. They don’t know each other, and yet they throw themselves into the sea together. I see these pictures cumulatively as an expression of both a universal, joyful submission to the elements, and an expression of the larger sublime: our small presence in the vast nature of things. The original On the Beach book was done at a farther distance so that it would be very hard to recognize anyone because they’re just little figures at sea. It’s an unusual, revealing perspective to watch people engage the natural world from this height.
Read the rest of this interview in Issue no. 18 - Humanity
