Richard Misrach (born in Los Angeles, California in 1949) is among the most important and influential of living American photographers. He produces large-scale color photographs that meditate on human intervention in the landscape and probe the environmental impact of industry. Misrach’s images also convey concern with color, light, and time. His best-known series, “Desert Cantos”, captures the awful beauty of human-wrought disasters in the desert; other subjects include the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and dramatic weather systems around San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge.

Curator Anne Wilkes Tucker writes that Misrach’s practice has been “driven [by] issues of aesthetics, politics, ecology, and sociology.” In a 2011 interview, Misrach noted: “My career, in a way, has been about navigating these two extremes – the political and the aesthetic.”