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

This photograph was taken by Richard Misrach in 2005 in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast. You can see that the process of grieving and evacuation is scrawled across the façade of this house. It's a found message, but what drew Misrach to this particular scene? There's a tenderness in the blue of the house, a conventional domestic color, standing against the black message. That raw graffiti suggests a sense of the immediate, of quick decisions made, of the need to communicate under duress. The front door is open; it creates a pull into a different space. The composition is pretty straightforward. It reminds me of some of the compositional strategies of the Bechers in their deadpan photographs of industrial buildings. But unlike the Bechers this image resonates with an immediacy and sense of human tragedy. The messages left on these houses are a testament to art's ongoing conversation with itself and with the world.