Richard Misrach: Never the Same | Art21 "Extended Play”

(soft piano music)

(mellow jazz music)

- It's been 20 years,

since I took the last pictures from here.

I spent three-four years photographing

this incredible view of the
Bay over and over again.

Take this out.

Put the film in.

I was stunned.

You'd think that the Golden Gate Bridge

would always look the same.

It's never the same.

When I look back on my
works, it's a time machine.

It triggers memories
that otherwise are gone.

(muffled chatter)

- I met Richard at a dinner
party at Thanksgiving.

(switch clicks)
(projector whirs)

But we really clicked
when I did a story on him

for Mother Jones about the bombing range

that he was working on.

I have actually written a
lot about our lives together,

on the road.

At some point, I'm not
sure if I should read that.

- And action.

- It has been 12 years
now of this adventure

joining Richard on his
travels to remarkable sites.

What stands out most,

the post-apocalyptic
landscape of Bravo 20.

Its stillness of things
obsessively, methodically destroyed.

His affinity for the desert runs deep.

A landscape many consider a wasteland.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

Here, the earth is alive,
simultaneously old and new.

There are salt beds as bright as snow

and silver-green pickets, white dunes,

and rock formations as improbable
as any modern sculpture.

He was incredibly passionate
about everything that he did

and he also had a great sense of humor.

♪ Moo, moo ♪

♪ I saw you standing alone ♪

♪ Without a calf of your own ♪

They've never run away
from me before. (chuckles)

- I think the whole thing
was rather enchanting.

(mellow jazz music)

- Eric, I'm coming down.
We can pin up somethin'.

- Okay.

- In the early days,
Myriam traveled with me.

Otherwise, nobody's ever gone with me

across the country to take pictures.

She went to the dead
animal pit, bombing ranges,

the nuclear test site.

It's freezing in here.

These were a lot of
places where I was very

politically involved, as
well as photographically.

- In the early days he asked
me something about a photograph

and I said, "Well, it's beautiful."

And he said, "'Beautiful'
is an empty signifier."

I went, "Oh, okay."

- I know that the viewer can't

think what I'm thinking and that's fine.

They're not supposed to.

But I wanted everything I created here

to have a conceptual foundation.

- He can't help it.

Even when it's something
incredibly beautiful,

he will always find some
sort of significance.

We've always gone to the
same place in Hawaii,

but he only thought about photographing

the water after 9/11.

He looked down and he saw these bodies.

- You see these small figures
in this vast sublime ocean

and you realize how vulnerable we are.

Photographs, when they're made,

can shift meaning with time, and often do.

There's lots of pictures I
like right away, but I know

that I'm gonna change my mind.

So I shoot them. I test them.

I make small prints.
Then I make large prints.

Then I kind of put 'em away,

sometimes for a year or two years.

Then I can see them really
fresh, like for the first time.

(peaceful music)

- In the warehouse, which
serves as Richard's studio

and was, until recently, our home,

there is a long dark corridor,

laden with shelves of
negatives and contact prints.

Tens of thousands of them.

Most of them will never
see the light of day

but they all harbor
the potential for life.

I think of them as dormant witnesses.

Each one, a record of a
single moment and place.

For me, knowing that Richard will not,

cannot throw them away,

adds to the mystery of the
photographer's process.

(cardboard scrapes)

- On these shelves are about
30,000 eight-by-ten negatives

that have never been printed before.

On this side here are boxes of contacts.

There are so many gems in there.

I found these beautiful images
I'd never printed before.

This is my beautiful wife,
Myriam, in the desert.

When I made these, I
couldn't really print them

because they might have had a scratch,

or the color might have been off.

So I put them away and
I didn't throw them out.

Now today, with digital technologies,

it's possible to scan them and fix errors.

Oh, look at these night skies.

I've never printed these before.

(mellow jazz music)

- I just think he senses
that time is running out

and he just wants to do more.

He's become more experimental.

He's open to pushing more boundaries.

Just letting go of some of the structures

that he'd lived by in the past.

It's just like, "No, why not?"

You know? Why not do that?

Just, just break the rules.

(energetic piano music)

- Got it.

Let's slide this one down that way.

Part of my routine for many,
many years is for me to drive

for two or three weeks
looking for photographs.

In the meantime, though, I
have done experimental bodies

of work over the years
that kind of shake me up,

make me think about things differently.

I would say that this
photograph comes out of that

experimentation mode.

The original image is like
twigs and branches on vegetation

with a technique that I use in Photoshop

to separate the color values.

It unnormalizes it and allows

for different kinds of interpretation.

In some respects, this neuron scrub

could look like a Jackson
Pollock painting, but it doesn't.

You still have some realism there.

You still have some
semblance of natural forms

that you recognize.

It's been interesting.

Recently, I was commissioned
to do all of the art

for the Pritzker Psychiatric
Clinic in San Francisco

that's just being built and
I couldn't travel for that.

- COVID happened at that
moment, and so what to do?

He couldn't go out there
and photograph anew.

He had to mine what he already had.

- I got all the kinds of
ideas of taking old images

and rethinking them in ways
I'd never thought about before.

- "How can I bring life into them?"

And before you know it,

he was looking at all sorts of things

that he probably would not ever
ever have considered before.

Every day, he'd be sitting there and say,

"Oh, you can't imagine what I found.

Come and look at that.
Come and look at that."

- I would make thousands of
experiments with Photoshop.

I would just play with them,
experiment, fool around.

Variations on variation.

And the whole project took off from there.

(mellow percussive music)

- One of the big challenges
that we face in psychiatry

in general, in medicine,

and in really embracing
psychiatry's part of medicine,

is this lack of care and respect
for inpatient facilities.

There's just a very direct
opportunity to use art

to say that we care.

Beauty is important.

We really hope that anyone
who walks in the door here

can be uplifted by the
physical environment.

That all of that will
contribute a sense of optimism

and hope.

- I'm in awe of the fact that
the Pritzker Clinic picked me.

A lot of my work is very tough work.

Things that could be a potential trigger.

Not the kind of thing you would expect

in a psychiatric clinic.

I've dealt with very,
very challenging issues.

Cancer alley, petrochemical
America, the border wall.

But I always wanted to balance that

with really beautiful things.

Like the sea.

Sky pictures.

The Golden Gate Bridge.

It's like a foil against the
darker projects that I've done.

(distant waves crash)

50 years, looking back,

I realized I needed beauty in my life.

- When he senses a photograph to be taken,

his attention turns away
from everything else.

"Time out", he asks politely.

His face takes on a weird, strained air.

It's the sort of face you make
when you're completely alone,

unselfconscious.

If he feels that you're
watching, he smiles,

and occasionally apologizes.

(camera shutter clicks)

He is unsparing in his determination.

Hours go by.

He waits.

We all wait.

He waits for the light to do things.

Things he has learned to
expect from experience.

"Look over there", he'll call out,

pointing to a section of cloudy sky.

"In about five minutes,

the light is going to be incredible."

Often, there are surprises.

(mellow jazz music)
(camera shutter clicks)

(camera shutter clicks)

(camera shutter clicks)

(camera shutter clicks)