Welcome to this edition of [book spotlight]. Today, we uncover the layers of 'Notations,' by Richard Misrach. We'd love to read your comments below about these insights and ideas behind the artist's work.

In a compelling exploration of the intersections between photography and the evocation of the unseen, Richard Misrach delves into the essence and transformative power of the negative image. His journey, rooted in a fascination with the alchemical process of analog photography and its evolution into the digital age, reflects a profound meditation on the medium's capability to render the familiar into the strikingly unfamiliar. Misrach's work, particularly through his acclaimed "Notations" series, embodies a quest to not just capture but reinterpret reality, drawing upon the influences of Ansel Adams' photographic philosophy and John Cage's experimental musical scores. This intersection of visual and auditory art forms culminates in a unique collaboration with his son, Jake Bloomfield-Misrach, whose musical compositions inspired by the "Notations" images, extend the dialogue between abstraction and realism, magic and materiality. As Misrach navigates the balance between these elements, he challenges and expands our perception of photography's role in contemporary art and culture.

Inspiration and Evolution: What sparked your interest in exploring the negative image in photography, and how has this interest evolved with your transition from analog to digital photography?

Let me just start off by saying—photography is a magical medium.  Like so many things in the world we take it for granted.  All day long you walk around doing your daily chores, and blood circulates thru your body and your brain produces thoughts, non-stop.  How does that happen?  These are just samples of miracles that happen daily that we don’t give a second thought to. Photography is a similar, if human-made, phenomenon, and we take its miraculousness for granted as well. My exploration of the negative form in photography is a simple exercise in making the familiar unfamiliar, drawing attention to its strange, unique beauty.

Starting in 1969 and up until 2006, like all photographers, I shot film. Around 1979, I began shooting 8x10” color film, which was even more complex. We took this most strange, elaborate process for granted. Putting clear gelatin in our cameras, exposing images to it thru a lens, creating the most unworldly mapping of the reality in our view, then putting the gelatin in an array of chemicals, and after standing in the dark for hours projecting light thru the negative onto blank sheets of paper, and then putting those pieces of paper in more trays of chemicals, which were then washed and dried. We never questioned the absolute weirdness of this prolonged and painstaking process.  This is simply what had to be done to make a photograph.  Suddenly, with the advent of the digital capture, all this convoluted effort became obsolete.  Digital capture could do everything film could, but better, faster and cheaper.  When I began shooting digitally it made me aware of, and in a sense fascinated by all that I had done.  I decided to revisit the absurd process in reverse.  Instead of simply turning a negative into a positive, I wondered what it would feel like to turn the positive into a negative.    My body of work and the book Notations are an homage to the end of the remarkable analogue era.

Artistic Influence: You've cited Ansel Adams and John Cage as inspirations for your "Notations" series. Can you elaborate on how their works influenced your approach to this project?

Ansel was a really fine classical pianist, and he compared the photographic negative to a musical score, a simple structure open to a range of interpretations. Apparently, he made over 500 different print versions of his famous image Moonrise over Hernandez.

And decades ago I bought a book by John Cage, called Notations. In it, he simply reproduced sample musical notations by a vast range of music composers, from classical to experimental, with the idea that the scores didn’t have to be performed, but that they were interesting to think of as visual, graphic art in their own right. These two concepts—from Adams and Cage--became the construct for my project, Notations.

Bringing this full circle is the fact that my son Jake, a musical composer, has now turned my Notations images into music.  He has created a musical composition based upon my images (see image below) and the resulting large-scale video (edited by Conor Hagen) will be making its debut at the SFMoMA Art Bash on April 24, 2024.

Aesthetic Experience: In your work, you’ve mentioned aiming to create an aesthetic experience with negative images. What do you hope viewers take away from these altered visual realities?

When you look at negative images, you no longer escape into realism, but rather you start to see a whole new language of form. The colors and shapes take on unusual relationships, still partially referencing the real world, but breaking away in unexpected, and often beautiful forms.  Think about Pollock and Rothko—they removed the subject matter, a portrait or a seascape, for example, from painting—and drew our attention to the beauty and expressiveness of color, paint texture, form.  The subject matter, so to speak, disappeared from painting, and it became about process, materials, and abstraction.  In a way, that’s what happens in these photographic images.

Selection and Editing Process: Over the span from 2006-2021, how did you go about selecting and editing images for "Notations"? What criteria did you use to shape this body of work?

The individual images were ultimately selected/edited based upon how interesting I found the strange colors, and novel forms.  Perhaps the same way a painter would choose certain lines or splatters over others to make an abstract painting. Very subjective, definitely no formula.  However, for the book, I decided to create chapters, or movements (a nod to Cage), based upon subject matter—clouds, or vegetation, for example. would be grouped together.

Abstraction and Realism: Your series teeters between abstraction and a form of heightened realism. How do you balance these elements in your work, and what challenges does this pose?

What’s novel about this project is that the colors are so abstracted, and yet the lines and forms are a full realism.  I think it’s the tension between those two—the abstraction and the realism in any given image-- that makes the work interesting to me.  The colors are otherworldly, and yet I recognize the structure of form. It’s been an incredible adventure…with so many surprises!

Concept of Magic in Photography: You've described photography as akin to magic. How does this concept of magic manifest in your "Notations" series, and how do you hope it impacts the viewer's perception?

Photography is so omnipresent in our lives (think of social media) it’s like breathing.  We just do it, we don’t think about what a miracle it is.  We literally point a box with a window on it at the 3-D world around us, and a two-dimensional, flat image gets sucked into our machine, which can be placed on a piece of paper (or on our cell-phone.)  If that ain’t magic I don’t know what is.

Future Explorations: Having explored the negative image extensively, are there new photographic techniques or concepts you are eager to explore next?

In the process of creating work during Covid for the UCSF Nancy Friend Pritzker Psychiatry Building, and the film for SFMoMA, I’ve come up with a number of new experimental forms I am very excited by including the positive and negative into one image, either as a diptych or a split-screen.  Also, for SFMoMA, I will be debuting my first AI-generated image.

Legacy and Learning: As one of the most influential photographers of our time, what advice do you have for emerging photographers, especially those interested in pushing the boundaries of traditional photography like you have with "Notations"?

Thank you.  Very kind of you.

I would say this:  photographs have always been determined by their technical limits. Only so much could be done with the first processes, like daguerreotypes, for example.  Then film came along, and photographic imagery changed. The 35mm camera was invented and everything changed again, then color film improved and so did the images, then digital photography became possible allowing a new generation of imagery.

We are at the beginning of the next great advance/adventure in photography.  AI.  Yes, AI is truly scary and the world needs to set up strict regulations.  But it is here to stay.  And on the positive side—along with aiding research to cure cancer and other diseases-I would say that the potential for creative escalation of the medium to do things we never imagined possible is coming. Fast and furious. If I were younger, I would dive right in. There has never been a medium like photography, and it is about to reach previously unimaginable heights of expression and insight.

To discover more about this intriguing body of work and how you can acquire your own copy, you can find and purchase the book here.

Richard Misrach, born in 1949, is a pivotal figure in contemporary photography, renowned for his large-scale color images that scrutinize human effects on natural landscapes. Over a distinguished 50-year career, Misrach's work spans themes from the haunting vistas of the Desert Cantos series to the impactful Border Cantos project, a collaboration highlighting the hidden narratives of the US-Mexico borderlands. His diverse portfolio also explores environmental degradation in Louisiana's cancer alley, the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, and the dynamic interplay of weather, light, and landscape at the Golden Gate. Misrach's early Telegraph 3AM series was showcased at the Museum of Modern Art, reflecting the depth and breadth of his contributions to photography. Living and working in Berkeley, California, Misrach remains a vital voice in the dialogue between humanity and the environment.

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