Rocky Flats Mesa, Colorado 1987

Richard Misrach created this photograph, Rocky Flats Mesa, Colorado, and I'm thinking about how the land looks so calm, yet the story behind it is anything but. Misrach doesn't go for shock value. Instead, he uses these very subtle shifts in color and focus to get under your skin. The way the light hits that lone tree in the distance, it almost glows, but the muted colors of the grass and sky seem heavy. The image is so smooth that it's almost hard to understand what it is at first. It is soft, but there is an odd tension. I’m reminded of the way that Robert Adams photographs the American West, finding these understated, almost banal scenes that reveal a deeper, more complex truth about our relationship to the land. There is an ambiguity, an openness that invites us to bring our own questions and experiences to the work.