Border Cantos (Three Views), 2009 - 2015

Since the 1970s, Richard Misrach has photographed the dynamic landscape of the American West through an environmentally and politically astute lens. Over the last decade, he has turned his attention to the increasingly militarized border between the United States and Mexico. This highly acclaimed body of work known as the ‘Border Cantos’ consists of timely and provocative images captured at the boundary between the two countries. Using three artist proofs from the series, Misrach has created a suite of large-scale prints to be exhibited as a single monumental work titled Border Cantos (Three Views). Two of the photographs, Wall, Jacumba, California (2009), and Wall, East of Nogales, Arizona (2015), depict the wall snaking through the harrowing desert landscape. The central photograph, Cabbage Crop Near Brownsville, Texas (2015), shows the eerie expanse of a field bisected by a rusted, steel wall. According to Misrach, ‘…the cabbage crop image was made on the American side of the wall outside of Brownsville where the Rio Grande is the border. The river meanders and the wall cannot follow it, so the wall was built inland and technically both sides of the wall are in the U.S.’

Richard Misrach (born 1949 in Los Angeles) is one of the pioneers of color photography and its large-scale presentation. The ‘Desert Cantos’ series, a monumental, multifaceted study of our political, cultural, and environmental relationship to the natural world, has made him one of the most influential photographers of the American landscape. Misrach lives and works in Berkeley.

In collaboration with Fraenkel, San Francisco

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