The Sky Book
2000
First impression of this Arena edition from 200 in as new condition. Jacket in removable protective sleeve.
About
The photographs in The Sky Book comprise Richard Misrach's most recent, most ambitious series, which transposes his narrative from the land to the sky. The images mediate between document and abstraction, reality and metaphor. Drawing on photography's documentary tradition, Misrach contextualizes each photograph with respect to time and place, rooting the celestial realm firmly in the earthly and political one. In this way, his images are reminiscent of the efforts of nineteenth-century expeditionary photographers to record the natural resources of the frontier. At the same time, Misrach's sky pictures are a quiet meditation and a study of ephemerality, light, and color. They evoke a legacy of abstraction in art and photography that includes Alfred Stieglitz's "Equivalents" and Mark Rothko's color field paintings.