Desert Fire #11
- Photographer
- Richard Misrach, American, born 1949
- Date
- 1983, printed 1986
- Material
- Chromogenic print
- Classification
- Photographs
- Collection
- Prints, Drawings, and Photographs
- Current Location
- Not on view
- Dimensions
- image: 18 3/8 x 23 1/8 in. (46.7 x 58.7 cm)
sheet: 20 x 24 in. (50.8 x 61 cm) - Credit Line
- Funds given by the Polaroid Foundation
- Rights
- © Richard Misrach, Courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco, Marc Selwyn Fine Art, Los Angeles, and Pace/MacGill Gallery, New York
- Object Number
- 163:1987
NOTES
A tragic beauty pervades Richard Misrach's photograph of the aftermath of a desert fire in the American Southwest. Several rows of charred palm trees in a smoky haze provide silent testimony to the recent destruction. As the fire that caused this blight was man-made, this photograph serves as an implicit critique of man's exploitation and mistreatment of the land. Instead of paradise, we are left to contemplate a scarred ecosystem. Misrach's images derive a unique power from their tension between visual seductiveness and disturbing subject matter.
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