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

Richard Misrach made this photograph in 2005, part of a series documenting the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast. Look at the garage door. Against its bland, functional surface, someone has spray-painted a message, a raw and urgent report: “9/30 SPCA 2 DOA K-9.” It’s a kind of ghost mark, a crude announcement scrawled in red, a primal scream. It’s hard to imagine what Misrach must have felt when he came across this scene. In the wake of such devastation, Misrach’s photograph becomes a study in absence and presence, silence and statement. The red lettering jumps out. You imagine the hand that wrote those words, the urgency, the despair. The plainness is searing. It’s a far cry from the expressive brushstrokes of a de Kooning, but it hits you in the gut just the same. Misrach, like other artists, reveals the marks left by human hands and the stories they tell. It’s an ongoing dialogue—artists responding to the world, leaving their marks, and inviting us to see and feel along with them.