On Saturday, July 26th, between 4:00 and 6:00 PM Arcana: Books on the Arts welcomes longtime friend, legendary photographer Richard Misrach to celebrate the release of his exquisite new Aperture monograph, Cargo. In addition to signing copies, he will give a brief talk about this thought-provoking body of work beginning at 5:00 PM sharp.

“Harkening back to his Golden Gate Bridge series — which the artist produced from his front porch over the course of four years beginning in 1997 — Cargo centers on the light, water, and weather of the San Francisco Bay. Misrach began creating this body of work in 2021 amid the pandemic and its attendant lockdowns. Captured at different times of day from a single location in San Francisco, these photographs speak to his enduring interest in bearing witness to the world around him from a singular vantage point over the course of months or years. The photographer describes this series as a meditation on and celebration of the setting of the San Francisco Bay. With these works, he also contemplates the design, function, and history of the ships in the bay, and all of the thousands of workers implied in the images. Behind these ships, there is a remarkable — if invisible —global workforce that builds them, and inhabits them, that packs and unloads them, that maneuvers them over oceans and canals, sometimes in dangerous situations, toward their eventual berths. Along with the extraordinary achievement and value these cargo ships symbolize, they also represent the complex, challenging side of our critical, intertwined, international commerce. In this historical moment, they allude to the threat that is global warming.”



If you cannot attend and would like to purchase your very own signed copy of Cargo, please place your order below.

Richard Misrach (b. 1949) is one of the most influential and internationally recognized photographers working today. He is best known for his epic project on the deserts of the American West and his On the Beach series, both of which explore his unique perspective on man’s place in nature. By exploring the social, political, environmental, and cultural characteristics of the places he photographs, Misrach has expanded the notion of traditional landscape photographic practice.  His previous subjects have included manmade floods and fires, military bombing ranges, isolated swimmers in a vast ocean, sublime night skies, and details of paintings housed in the museums of the Southwest.

Misrach has exhibited extensively in the United States and abroad. Recent museum exhibitions include Border Cantos, made in collaboration with the experimental composer Guillermo Galindao, which was exhibited at Amon Carter Museum of Art, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, and San Jose Museum of Art in 2016-2017. His work is represented in many prominent collections including the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, The National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C., the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, California, and The Getty Museum of Art, California. Misrach is a recipient of numerous awards including a Guggenheim Fellowship and four National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships. In 2001, he received the Knight Purchase Award for Photographic Media from the Akron Art Museum, and in 2002, the Kulturpreis for Lifetime Achievement in Photography from the German Society of Photography. He lives in Berkeley, California, with his wife, Myriam.