Untitled [New Orleans and the Gulf Coast, 2005] Possibly 2005 - 2010

Richard Misrach captured this photo in 2005 along the Gulf Coast. You can almost smell the musty wood, can’t you? I imagine someone standing there, perhaps amidst the wreckage of their home, armed with a can of spray paint and a question. It's a raw, visceral query splattered across the boarded-up window and fence: "WHAT NOW?" followed by that glaring question mark. The orange paint screams against the muted tones of the wood, brick, and gray sky. Misrach's choice to photograph this resonates with the urgency and despair that marked the aftermath of a natural disaster. The texture of the wood, the haphazard application of paint – it’s all so immediate, so human. What now? It echoes through the silence of the frame, inviting us to consider not just the physical devastation, but the emotional and existential questions that arise when everything is upended. It's like a raw, urgent Cy Twombly gesture, but on a house.