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

Richard Misrach made this photograph, sometime around 2005, of the Gulf Coast area with a camera. It’s hard to know where to start in this image, but that seems appropriate to the subject. The colour palette is muted and washed out, which gives the scene a melancholic feel. Look how the fallen tree cuts across the composition, becoming a kind of bridge between the houses. What’s so powerful here is the way Misrach captures the aftermath of a disaster, the sense of something broken and disrupted. The tree seems to have left its mark on the house, which sits at an odd angle. It reminds me of Vija Celmins’ meticulous drawings of mundane objects and landscapes, but here, instead of quiet observation, we have a scene charged with emotion and history. Ultimately, Misrach is presenting us with a stark, unflinching look at the world, where the line between beauty and destruction is blurred.