Train Tracks, Colorado Desert, California Possibly 1984 - 1985

Richard Misrach captured 'Train Tracks, Colorado Desert, California' using photography, a process in itself. The soft, muted tones wash over the landscape, creating a hazy, dreamlike quality. The tracks themselves, those parallel lines cutting through the vastness, are so precise, so man-made, it is like the photo is divided between the hard geometry of the railroad and the ambiguous openness of the desert. The texture of the sand, the subtle variations in the sky – it’s all about surface and light. It reminds me of Ed Ruscha, who also found poetry in the mundane. He knew how to use light and composition to transform something ordinary into something extraordinary, just like Misrach. It's that ability to find the sublime in the everyday that makes art so endlessly fascinating.