What lies beneath a compelling landscape?

Since 2001, color photography pioneer Richard Misrach has made a series of large-scale, lushly colored photographs of swimmers and sunbathers in Hawaii. Working from a hotel adjacent to the beach, Misrach adopts a floating viewpoint that eliminates all reference to the horizon or sky to record people wholly immersed in the idyllic environment. The photographs, which are vast in scale and perspective, coax the particularities of nature into ethereal, nearly abstract patterns of color and light.

Yet despite their compelling beauty, an oblique sense of disquietude pervades these photographs. An unquiet apprehension of “danger in paradise” is integral to their meaning. Begun in the days immediately after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001, the series, made over a five year period, speaks to the sense of physical and psychological vulnerability that has pervaded the nation’s consciousness since that time.

Twenty photographs will be included in this exhibition, which completes an extensive national tour at the High.

Exhibition Tour
The exhibition debuted at the Art Institute of Chicago in September 2007, subsequently traveling to The Contemporary Museum, Honolulu (December 15, 2007–March 9, 2008), the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. (May 25–September 1, 2008) and the Henry Art Gallery in Seattle (October 11, 2008–January 18, 2009).

The exhibition will be on view at the High Museum of Art from June 6 through August 23, 2009.