Category: on photographers

beginnings: Richard Misrach

Posted on Posted in art school, art stuff, artgame, on photographers, On The Road2 Comments

Misrach and Minick. We know one name more than the other. Neither was a founder. One, much more persistent, enduring, noticed. Richard Misrach worked, and achieved for a decade before becoming a constant source of imagery. He achieved early support which grew. His contact sphere increased. He began, though, with help from Roger Minick. Two RMs. Without Roger Minick it is less likely we would have Richard Misrach; if we didn’t have high regard for Misrach would we remember Minick?

It wasn’t the film or camera that gave him his start. Neither was a singularly distinctive toolset to delineate his work from others. The mistake made by the weekender is thinking the craft skill is determinant in success.

Quotes:

>> when I was in college studying math and psychology, I saw a small exhibition of photographs on campus by Roger Minick. I recognized the beauty and power of the medium, and felt for the first time that it was something I should be doing with my life. --Misrach
>> my first serious pictures in colour were of the jungles in Hawaii in 1978, and were a fairly direct evolution of my night desert work. I was still working with a Hasselblad, at night, with a strobe, but I shifted my subject from the sparse desert vegetation to the lush tropical landscape, and shot it in colour instead of black and white. It was a pretty straight-forward move, really. But I was hooked. I have never taken another black and white picture since. --Misrach
>> I'm never done with my earlier work. I have over 35,000 8x10" negatives that I've never even printed! It's an archive that I constantly mine for both old and new ideas. And particularly now, with digital capabilities, I can print difficult negatives which were not technically possible to print before. --Misrach, 2006.

>> Misrach wanted to allow his sitters to be part of the process. He asked each person for permission to make their portrait and used a Hasselblad camera set on a tripod, a slower and more formal approach that enabled his subjects to pose and confront his lens. Over three years, from 1972 to ’74, he dedicated himself to this body of work –– Lucy Gallun

>> 1985. I pay a lot of attention to accidents… in the case where the bottom of my film was chopped off, I liked what I could do with it. I printed the work larger and it got me to a rectangulary format. …{do you print your own color work}. I did. then I stopped. Sometimes I print my own contacts. … it has freed me up. I like printing… But, I have a wonderful printer who taught me everything I know about printing anyway. Ninety-ninee percent of the time she does wonderful work.

[1985 papers]: Ektacolor Plus, Ektacolor 78. I did a dye transfer portforlio and I had Cibachromes made from negatives… they weren’t as beautiful. They didn’t correspond to what I was trying to do.

[the fire:] I lost about 3,000 8x10s and 1,000 2 1/4s. most of my Hawaii… most of my Greece … all my Louisiana … about 3,000 negatives from the Desert Cantos project.

>> [1997] It starts with the Volkswagen van (the fourth in twenty-five years), windows curtained off against the sun. A foam bed on the floor. Three pillows. A sleeping bag. A scratchy Mexican blanket. Several plastic gallons of Black Mountain water. Toilet paper. A roll of paper towels. A parka, permanently stored here. A dog-eared Rand McNally road atlas. Several topographic maps. A shovel. An axe. Jumper cables. An entire suitcase of books by Baudrillard, Ballard, Camus, Pound, plus a book on the stars called Mapping the Heavens and a planisphere. And music: lots of Philip Glass and Steve Reich, along with Santana, Nick Cave, John Adams. Anna Domino, Dylan, Blind Melon, Smashing Pumpkins.  1997, MYRIAM WEISANG MISRACH

>> [2019] I haven’t shot 8×10 for 13 years. The cell phone camera is always with me, and is inconspicuous. I can photograph quickly, without drawing attention to myself. Hence, I am able to make a different kind of picture, impossible with either the big film or digital cameras. As I said above, with each new advance in technology, the very language of photography is expanded. — Richard Misrach

showed his work and asked for grants. he continued making work… made more pictures without needing more equipment.

  • 1949. Richard Misrach Born in Los Angeles

  • 1971 Completed BA at University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA

  • Between 1965 and 1975, Minick was on staff at the ASUC Studio, serving as director from 1971 to 1975.

  • 1973. Group show “Places” SFAI. San Francisco Art Institute.

    Richard Misrach, ASUC Studio, October 1973

  • 1973 Nat’l Endowment for the Visual Artist’s Fellowship (*see below table)

    This grant associated many names that would become known.

  • (1974) Minick designs Richard Misrach’s Telegraph 3 AM .. Western Book Award

  • 1975 Telegraph 3AM exhibit

  • 1975 Two Views from the West: Roger Minick & Richard Misrach, International Center of
    Photography, New York, NY. Richard Misrach’s photo-essay, Telegraph 3am, depicts the street people of Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley, California. Delta West includes some sixty prints by Roger Minick of the land and people of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Valley.

    Misrach, Darkroom Workshop Gallery, Jan-Feb, 1975

  • 1975 experimenting with night desert imagery

  • 1977 Richard Misrach: Night Work, Oakland Museum, Oakland, CA
    Richard Misrach: Night Photographs, ARCO Center for Visual Arts, Los Angeles, CA

  • 1977 National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship

  • 1978 Mirrors and Windows group show

  • 1979 J. Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship

    Grapestake Gallery, San Francisco, April-May 1979 (catalogue)

  • 1979 to Italy and Greece .. night pictures of Greek ruins

  • Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco, 1979 OPENS

  • 1980. Untitled (Hawaii XV), 1980 dye-transfer print, 16 x 20 inches (sheet) [40.6 x 50.8 cm] Night with Flash

  • 1981. Richard Misrach, Grapestake Gallery

  • 1982. Richard Misrach: Color Photographs, Grapestake Gallery

  • 1983. The Desert Series, Grapestake Gallery, Dec 83-Jan, 1984

  • 1984 National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship

  • Misrach @ Fraenkel, early:

    1984 “Fifth Anniversary Exhibit” 1985 “Scenes from the American Desert”

    A Decade of Photography, Friends of Photography, Carmel

  • 1988 Infinity Award for “Desert Cantos” International Center for Photography

  • 1989 marries Myriam Weisang [12/55 -]

  • 1990. Teaches at Cal Arts

  • 1992 National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship

1973 grants
* NEA 1973 (partial) photographers receiving grants

Oscar’s Photo Lab: In March of 2011 the lab was severely damaged by an early morning fire and was closed for nearly a year due to construction. founded in 1982 by Noubar Oscar Demirjian

Grapestake Gallery in San Francisco
The Grapestake Gallery was founded in San Francisco in 1974 by Thomas V. Meyer and his sister Ursula Gropper. The gallery was the first in San Francisco to exhibit photographs concurrently with painting and sculpture. The gallery helped to introduce and validate photography as a fine-art and collecting medium. The gallery opened with an Ansel Adams retrospective(1974) and later exhibited artists such as Harry Callahan, Joel Meyerowitz, Paul Strand, William Eggleston, Richard Misrach, Berenice Abbott and Jerry Uelsmann. Richard Misrach had his first one-man show here. Grapestake Gallery closed in 1984

[xcross to:The Harry Lunn papers document the business dealings of the print and photography dealer from the mid-1960s until his death in 1998, and provide a glimpse into the workings of one of the creators of the photography art market during the second half of the twentieth century.]

The 2023 record price for Richard Misrach was for ‘Untitled, #213-04’The 2022 record price for Richard Misrach was for Ocotillo at NightThe 2021 record price for Richard Misrach was for ‘#114-03’The 2020 record price for Richard Misrach was for ‘UNTITLED (JULY 28, 2012 3:57 PM)’The 2019 record price for Richard Misrach was for Untitled #328-02The 2018 record price for Richard Misrach was for Untitled #833-02The 2017 record price for Richard Misrach was for Untitled (February 14 6:20 pm), 2012The 2016 record price for Richard Misrach was for Untitled #114-03The 2015 record price for Richard Misrach was for Untitled, #213-04 from On the BeachThe 2014 record price for Richard Misrach was for Untitled #69-527The 2013 record price for Richard Misrach was for Untitled #591-04The 2012 record price for Richard Misrach was for Train Tracks, Colorado Desert, CaliforniaThe 2011 record price for Richard Misrach was for PALM TREE, CALIFORNIAThe 2010 record price for Richard Misrach was for UntitledThe 2009 record price for Richard Misrach was for Untitled, 2003The 2008 record price for Richard Misrach was for Untitled #222-04, 2004The 2007 record price for Richard Misrach was for ‘diving board, salton sea’The 2006 record price for Richard Misrach was for White Man Contemplating Pyramid, from Desert Cantos: The Prologue, 1989The 2005 record price for Richard Misrach was for Palm Tree #3The 2004 record price for Richard Misrach was for Moon over Black Rock, 8:22 p.m.-10:24 p.m.The 2003 record price for Richard Misrach was for “Desert Fire #249.”The 2002 record price for Richard Misrach was for The Santa FeThe 2001 record price for Richard Misrach was for ‘DESERT FIRE #1 (BURNING PALMS)’The 2000 record price for Richard Misrach was for ‘HAWAII’The 1999 record price for Richard Misrach was for 15 Works: Desert Canto VI: The PitThe 1998 record price for Richard Misrach was for Cloud #74

References:

Publications:

  • Telegraph 3 A.M.: The Street People of Telegraph Avenue, Berkeley, Cornucopia Press, Berkeley, CA, 1974
  • (untitled photographic book), Grapestake Gallery, San Francisco, CA, 1979
  • Desert Cantos, University of New Mexico Press, Santa Fe, NM, 1987 (first and second editions)
  • Desert Cantos (Japanese edition), Treville Corporation Ltd., 1987
  • Richard Misrach: 1975-1987, Gallery Min, Tokyo. 1988
  • Desert Cantos, University of New Mexico Press, Santa Fe, NM, 1988 (third edition)
  • Bravo 20: The Bombing of the American West (with Myriam Weisang Misrach), Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, MD, 1990
  • Violent Legacies: Three Cantos (with fiction by Susan Sontag), Aperture, New York City, 1992
  • Violent Legacies: Three Cantos (with fiction by Susan Sontag), Aperture, New York City, 1994 (softcover edition)
  • Crimes and Splendors: The Desert Cantos of Richard Misrach, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX, 1996[5]
  • Cantos del Desierto, Diputacion de Granada, Granada, Spain, 1999
  • The Sky Book, Arena Editions, Santa Fe, NM, 2000
  • Richard Misrach: Golden Gate, Arena Editions, Santa Fe, NM, 2001
  • Pictures of Paintings, Blind Spot/Powerhouse Books, 2002
  • Richard Misrach: Chronologies, Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco, CA, 2005
  • Richard Misrach: Golden Gate, Aperture, New York City, 2005 (second edition)
  • Richard Misrach: On The Beach, Aperture, New York City, 2007
  • Destroy This Memory, Aperture, New York City, 2010[22]
  • 1991, Blind Spot/Powerhouse Books, 2011
  • Petrochemical America (with Kate Orff), Aperture, New York City, 2012[10]
  • Richard Misrach: Golden Gate, Aperture, New York City, 2013 (third edition)
  • 11.21.11 5:40pm, Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco, CA, 2013
  • iPhone Studies: Reverse Scrubs, Nazraeli Press (One Picture Book No. 82), Portland, OR, 2013
  • Misrach, Nazraeli Press (Six by Six), Portland, OR, 2014
  • Petrochemical America (with Kate Orff), Aperture, New York City, 2014 (paperback edition)
  • Assignment No 2 (Michael Nelson with Richard Misrach and Hiroshi Sugimoto), TBW Books, Oakland, CA, 2014
  • The Mysterious Opacity of Other Beings, Aperture, New York City, 2015
  • Photographers’ References: Richard Misrach, Photographers’ References, Paris, France, 2016
  • Border Cantos by Richard Misrach and Guillermo Galindo; with an introduction and texts by Josh Kun. Aperture, New York City, 2016

Color Films info

Notes: 9/20

Posted on Posted in art stuff, on photographers, overnight notesTagged ,

Name drop with links. Not annotated.

I will be back filling posts on some topics — those dealing with topics of lab-work such as dye transfer. Another concern of how hobbyists contaminate the knowledge pool, is of diminishing use. Rather than opening a new page on these matters, I will add thoughts to existing posts. My interest in teaching was filled over that past decade: I have taught enough people how to make dye transfers and collotypes to pay my bill. Contact them… if you can’t find them, you must not know where to look. Avoid the Snobby Lobbies.

If I remember, I will post a link to updated items. Probably not going to happen. Then again, you may see something like (the following) as an “overnight” –this one doesn’t contain links, others may..

dumping dye transfer

[[ mod title of current draft 'way it was'
turn to the browning group sell off of existing equipment along with failure of dtc and efke products]
reminder: garelick's banning was over slammin kodak and his not using efke yet he called it flawed -- a standard wiley not held to.  dw doesnt print digital yet slams it at every iteration. 
his praise is for the kodakery mandated imaging: ala colorama life-style]
---
analogy wars

-- get the analogy aint ez
spit, spray,