Stranded Rowboat, Salton Sea
Photograph
Stranded Rowboat, Salton Sea
From Desert Cantos III / The Flood
1983
Chromogenic development print, printed 1984
Image: 46.8 x 58.6 cm
Overall: 50.8 x 60.8 cm
Purchase with funds from the Charina Foundation
1990.0065.0003
Inscriptions recto (ink): 4/25 Stranded Rowboat, Salton Sea
[copyright symbol] Richard Misrach 1983/p 84
[copyright symbol] Richard Misrach 1983/p 84
TextRichard Misrach has been photographing the desert landscape of the American West since the mid-1970s, rendering its singularly surreal topography in large color photographs of uncommon beauty. For a book he called Desert Cantos, published in 1987, he grouped them into sections: “The Terrain,” “The Event,” “The Flood,” and “The Fire.” This image comes from “The Flood,” which includes scenes surrounding the Salton Sea, an artificial body of water that flooded regularly in the 1970s and 1980s due to infrastructure problems. Much more than a document of the resulting property destruction, postdiluvian images like this one read as eerily placid corridos about humankind’s perennial attempt to conquer nature—and its continual, inevitable defeat.
Lisa Hostetler, Ph.D.
Curator in Charge, Department of Photography
Label for A History of Photography [Rotation 1]
May 9–September 28, 2014
Lisa Hostetler, Ph.D.
Curator in Charge, Department of Photography
Label for A History of Photography [Rotation 1]
May 9–September 28, 2014
