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Art and the Immigrant Experience
Art and the Immigrant Experience
Photo credit: Radiokafka / Shutterstock Being an immigrant is a fraught situation, particularly in this day and age. So it’s no surprise that many immigrants turn to art as a way of expressing their experiences and giving voice to their fears—and triumphs—as outsiders in their adopted communities. Several recent art shows have focused on these ideas through the mediums of fiber arts,…
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Richard Misrach | Veronica, Friendship Park, Border Field State Park, San Diego, 2013, from the Border Cantos series
Richard Misrach turns a lens on the tragedy and mystery of the U.S.–Mexico frontier.
In November 2011, Misrach participated in a Pop-Up Magazineevent in San Francisco. One of his fellow contributors was Galindo, who performed a piece with the writer Daniel Alarcón, in which the instruments were made from objects found along the border. Struck by the resonance between his photographs and Galindo’s music, Misrach says he had shivers. A few months later, the two decided to collaborate. Misrach sends objects he comes across at the border to Galindo, who transforms them into instruments and writes compositions for them. “Richard’s photographs have become music,” Galindo says, “and my music has materialized into his images. One thing cannot exist without the other.” LS 24 | Road SUGGESTION
Richard Misrach - Border Cantos
www.landscapestories.net
Although Richard Misrach has been photographing the American desert for more than 40 years, it wasn’t until 2009 that he decided to turn his full attention to the 1,969-mile border between the United States and Mexico. The multibillion-dollar barrier under construction, with long sections made out of Corten steel, was radically reconfiguring the landscape. It was, he says, an eye-opener — he saw the border as a place where politics and culture collided against each other with unexpected, and often tragic, implications. Misrach has always been interested in what he calls “traces of the future,” objects whose meanings are not clear when he photographs them but that emerge over time, signaling a new historic moment. The building of the border wall was one such moment. Ever since, he has traveled from the Pacific Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico six times a year looking for the future.
For most of his career, Misrach has worked alone, but two years ago, he began to collaborate with the composer Guillermo Galindo. Galindo’s music, written for instruments made from objects found along the border, will interact with Misrach’s photographs in an exhibition that the San Jose Museum of Art is mounting in the spring of 2016. The exhibition will tour the country through 2018, and Aperture will publish a book documenting the collaboration. These photographs appear here for the first time.
Misrach:“All the photographs are about found objects — shotgun shells from a Border Patrol shooting range, a soccer ball, a boot, a Spanish translation of Doctor Zhivago — that are banal but laden with meaning. I’m always on the lookout for the anomalous. Early in 2014, about an hour from Brownsville, Texas, I found a girl’s tweezers, a ball, two Bibles, and a child’s tennis shoes. Along the border, you’re constantly stumbling across discarded migrants’ clothes, but what made this time so eerie was that all I found were children’s items and clothes. It wasn’t until several months later, when I heard the news reports about the wave of unaccompanied children crossing the border, that I understood what I saw. Whenever I go to the desert, I discover things that are unusual. I may not know what they are, but I know a potent narrative will follow in the months or years ahead.
“When I stumbled upon these human effigies along the California–Mexico border in 2009, the project suddenly became real for me. Here were these objects — made with agave sticks and hung with discarded clothes like scarecrows — that were so disturbing and haunting and mysterious. Were they meant to warn the immigrants coming over the mountain pass? Were they created to protest the Border Patrol? Or were they simply intended as art? They’re so open to interpretation.”
“The wall separating Tijuana and San Diego with its thick vertical bars reminds me of a jail cell. On the Tijuana side, families are on the beach, playing in the surf, barbecuing, sunning themselves. On the U.S. side, because it’s so militarized, no one is enjoying the beach.”
“Along the border, there are miles and miles of roads, going back to the 1920s, that have been built by the Border Patrol. They’re called ‘drag roads,’ because the Patrol drags whatever’s at hand — metal roofing, chain-link fencing, but mostly big tires — to smooth out the road. Sometimes they’re weighed down by stones or anvils. Lately, the Patrol has been using what looks like car-wash brushes. They do this every day. By smoothing the road, they can detect any signs of human activity — to see if anyone has crossed. It’s an old Native American trick called ‘cutting for sign.’ In response, the migrants wrap carpet around their feet with twine to make booties that don’t leave marks. As soon as they’re on the other side of the road, they discard the carpet. You find pieces everywhere.”
LS 24 | Road SUGGESTION
Richard Misrach - Border Cantos
www.landscapestories.net
This project presents a unique collaboration between photographer Richard Misrach and composer and performer Guillermo Galindo. Misrach has been photographing the two-thousand mile border between the U.S. and Mexico since 2004, with increased focus since 2009—the latest installation in his ongoing series Desert Cantos, a multi-faceted approach to the study of place and man’s complex relationship to it. Misrach and Galindo have been working together to create pieces that both document and transform the artifacts of migration. Using water bottles, clothing, backpacks, Border Patrol “drag tires,” spent shotgun shells, ladders, and sections of the border wall itself, most of which were collected by Misrach, Galindo fashions instruments to be performed as unique sound-generating devices. He also imagines graphic musical scores, many of which also use Misrach’s photographs as points of departure.
A unique melding of the artist as documentarian and interpreter, the book will include several suites of photographs drawn from a number of distinct series, or Cantos—some made with a large-format camera as well as an iPhone. The book will also contain a compilation of two dozen sculpture-instruments, graphic scores, instrument designs, and links to videos of performances by Galindo on the image-inspired instruments.
LS 24 | Road SUGGESTION
Richard Misrach - Border Cantos
www.landscapestories.net
LS 24 | Road SUGGESTION
Richard Misrach - Border Cantos
www.landscapestories.net
ichard Misrach is one of the most influential photographers of his generation. In the 1970s, he helped pioneer the renaissance of color photography and large-scale presentation that are in widespread practice today. Best known for his ongoing series, Desert Cantos, a multi-faceted approach to the study of place and man’s complex relationship to it, he has worked in the landscape for over 40 years. The recent chapter of the series, Border Cantos, made in collaboration with the experimental composer Guillermo Galindo, explores the unseen realities of the US-Mexico borderlands. This work will be exhibited at the Amon Carter Museum of Art in late 2016. Other notable bodies of work include his documentation of the industrial corridor along the Mississippi River known as “Cancer Alley”, the study of weather, time, color and light in his serial photographs of the Golden Gate bridge, and On The Beach, an aerial perspective of human interaction and isolation.
Recent projects mark departures from his work to date. In one series, he has experimented with new advances in digital capture and printing, foregrounding the negative as an end in itself and digitally creating images with astonishing detail and color spectrum. In another, he built a powerful narrative out of images of graffiti produced in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, made with a 4-megapixel pocket camera. In fall 2012, in collaboration with landscape architect Kate Orff, Misrach launched a major book and exhibition entitled Petrochemical America, which addresses the health and environmental issues associated with our dependency on oil.
LS 24 | Road SUGGESTION
Richard Misrach - Border Cantos
www.landscapestories.net
LS 24 | Road SUGGESTION
Richard Misrach - Border Cantos
www.landscapestories.net
