Richard Misrach: Notations

A sumptuous, large-format photographic homage to the end of the analog era

Since 2006, coinciding with his shift away from analog film to working exclusively with a digital camera, Richard Misrach has been exploring the aesthetic possibilities of the negative image. His latest body of work, debuted in this deluxe, oversize (16.75 by 13 inches), landscape-format volume, comprises dazzling, sublime photographs of landscapes and natural scenes–in negative, but using color with great dexterity and nuance. Inspired by Ansel Adams’ comparison of the photographic negative to a musical score, and John Cage’s 1969 book, Notations, which compiles music scores as art, Misrach here envisages the photographic image as a score-like negative, teetering on abstraction, that invites a diversity of interpretations. The result is a series of immense beauty unlike any previous Misrach publication. Richard Misrach (born 1949) is one of the most influential photographers working today. For the past five decades, he has used visually stunning, large-scale color vistas to address human intervention in the natural world. He lives and works in Berkeley, California.