From our partners at Art Practical, today we bring you Brian Karl’s review of Richard Misrach: Being(s) 1975–2015 at Fraenkel Gallery in San Francisco. Karl notes: “Misrach’s technical and compositional treatments produce a distancing effect that imbues the human figures with a kind of impotence.” This article was originally published on May 19, 2015.

Richard Misrach. Kodak, Donna, Debra, Jake, Oregon Coast, 1984; pigment print; 61 1/2 x 76 1/2 in. © Richard Misrach. Courtesy of Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco.

This Fraenkel Gallery survey of more than thirty years of Richard Misrach’s photography primarily features small, isolated human figures in larger land- or seascapes. In much of the artist’s most famous work (not included here), for example Cancer Alley (1998) and Desert Cantos (1981–2001), human presence is indicated through occasional signs of intervention: tire tracks, contrails, an abandoned-looking building. By contrast, in Being(s) 1975–2015, the presence of humanity is marked by actual human bodies. Ultimately, however, the vastness of the natural expanses (large bodies of water, parklands, deserts) and the conditions of weather (wind, tide, clouds) relentlessly prevail, overwhelming the tiny, tenuously balanced figures.

The prints are mostly large-scale, and some, such as the nearly twelve-foot-long Playas de Tijuana #1 (Crowded Beach), San Diego, California (2013), are vast. A couple, including IPS #0134 (2011) and Untitled (Silver Reverse) (2002), are more modest in dimension, barely more than twelve inches high or wide. Many of the works were shot years ago and only recently printed for this show. Misrach has left visible frame-number marks from the decades-old film in some prints to highlight the shift in photographic tools and techniques from analog to (increasingly) digital.

Read the full article here.