Richard Misrach at the High Museum of Art Atlanta
Revisiting the South: Richard Misrach's Cancer Alley June 2 - October 7, 2012 Hazardous Waste Containment Site, Dow Chemical Corporation, Mississippi River, Plaquemine, LA. © Richard Misrach In 1998, the High commissioned California-based photographer Richard Misrach to create a body of work as part of the Museum’s Picturing the South series. Misrach studied the ecological degradation of a passage of the Mississippi River between Baton Rouge and New Orleans. This is an area where a number of petro-chemical industries are based and which is sometimes referred to as Cancer Alley. Like the Western landscapes for which Misrach is best known, these photographs challenge viewers with environmental and political concerns while seducing them with evocative and lyrically beautiful large scale prints. In focusing on the delicate state of the Mississippi River, Misrach’s work signals not just the environmental challenges facing the South but also the larger costs of our modern world at t
