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

Richard Misrach made this photograph, part of his series on New Orleans and the Gulf Coast, in 2005. It's a landscape of information, made with a camera. That red writing on the boarded-up house cuts right through me. It's so raw, like a scream on a wall. The way it's scrawled, not precise at all, feels like someone was desperate to be heard. You can almost feel the urgency. The red itself is like a flare, impossible to ignore. I'm reminded of Gordon Matta-Clark, who sliced into buildings to reveal hidden spaces and make a statement about architecture and society. Misrach, through his lens, does something similar, revealing the layers of human experience etched onto this ravaged landscape. Both show us that art doesn't have to be pretty; it needs to be real. Art as an ongoing conversation - and this piece is shouting.