Richard Misrach

Richard Misrach (born 1949 in Los Angeles, California) went to college at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1967 from where he obtained a B.A. in Psychology. Soon after arriving on Berkeley’s campus, he was confronted with the student-movement and the anti-war riots taking place there and began photographing these events. After graduation, he completed his first major photo project in 1974, depicting homeless residents of Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley. Soon after Misrach retreated to the deserts of Southern California, focusing on landscapes devoid of humans. Developing these images, he started experimenting with more obscure printing techniques. In the 1970s he also began using color photography. Like his German contemporaries Thomas Struth and Andreas Gurksy, Misrach works in large-scale color photography, and has used large-format cameras for most of his artistic career. More recently, Misrach has experimented with reverse photographs, a reflection on the end of the analog era in photography, and has embraced cell-phone photography using his iPhone.