Richard Misrach’s captivating series On the Beach, executed between 2002 and 2005, is comprised of photographs taken from the same high-rise hotel in Hawaii. Stationed at his perch above the ocean, Misrach captured a range of immersive scenes – some composed of endless expanses of water and others focused on the bodies stationed on the beach. In order to make extremely precise prints, Misrach used an 8-by-10-inch view camera to produce the negatives. He then scanned each one so he could make digital adjustments, somet.mes s removing figures or completely depopulating an image. The resulting mural-sized prints are at once vast and meticulously detailed.
Misrach’s series includes both seascapes and beach-scapes, all of which draw upon the expressive power of texture, color, and repetition of visual elements. This imagery, which swings between ocean and land, evokes a double-sided coin, with the transcendent and infinite on one side, and the inevitable passage of t.mes inherent to the human lifespan on the other. Here, Misrach depicts a sole female figure standing on the edge of the Pacific.
The horizontal coastline bisecting the seemingly endless expanses of water and land recalls the color-field paintings of Mark Rothko, Barnett Newman, and other giants of American art. Like Rothko’s negative spaces between his soft-edged rectangles and Newman’s signature 'zips', Misrach draws upon the expressive power of color blocking to evoke the mysterious, transcendent and infinite.
Misrach considers his seat in the sky as ‘a god’s-eye view ’ – a 21st-century twist on Barnett Newman’s interpretation of the sublime. Indeed, Misrach acknowledges that these works are ‘. . . much more about our relationship to the bigger sublime pictures of things’ (as quoted in Kenneth R. Fletcher, ‘Richard Misrach’s Ominous Beach Photographs,’ Smithsonian Magazine, August 2008).
Although these photographs often feel majestic and uplifting, Misrach’s impetus for the series emerged from a dark moment in recent history. Misrach was in Washington, D. C., during the September 11th attacks on the World Trade Center in Manhattan, where his son attended school. He experienced the surreal, heartbreaking reality of the city when he drove into New York to pick up his child. Shortly thereafter Misrach visited Hawaii, a frequent vacation spot for his family. He described being ‘haunted by the whole experience in New York.’ (ibid). An image that on one hand feels inviting and joyful can on the other hand invoke isolation and fear.
‘[I was] haunted by the terrible events of only a couple of months earlier. This t.mes , I saw people as vulnerable, as if they were on the edge of the earth and this vast sea could potentially destroy them. The photographs of people falling and jumping from the Twin Towers had really struck me. In Hawaii, viewing these small figures resonated the same way.’
The title On the Beach elicits thoughts of sun-soaked summer afternoons and languid holidays. Reinforcing the dichotomy of optimism and fear embedded in the images, the title also points to Nevil Shute’s 1957 novel On the Beach, which describes a post-apocalyptic world after nuclear warfare. Both the context surrounding the origins of this series and the literary doomsday allusion prompt a reevaluation of the seemingly hypnotic cadence of the waves as imbued with foreboding undercurrents.
Sarah Greenough, curator at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D. C., organized an exhibition of the series in 2008. She noted that works from the series are at first impression ‘beautiful’ and ‘soft,’ but one’s perception shifts with t.mes : ‘After you look at them for a while, though, they are hardly soft at all. There really is something very ominous going on.' (Sarah Greenough, as quoted in Smithsonian Magazine, 2008)