Author Description

"Golden Gate offers yet another dimension to celebrated photographer Richard Misrach's artistic output. Three years ago, he and his family moved into a house in the Berkeley hills of Northern California. Since then, Misrach has been obsessively photographing the magisterial view of the Golden Gate Bridge from his front porch, each photograph taken from the exact same viewpoint at different times of day. The eighty-five photographs reproduced here, from a series of over seven hundred, capture the opening between bay and ocean, and the famous bridge, in every light and weather condition. The perils of cliche would have overcome most photographers, but Misrach's pictures elevate his subject to the sublime - banks of charcoal cotton or ocher clouds; tangerine, lemon, and rosy sunsets; heavy black storm curtains; and thick rays of light. Like color field painting, these views transcend the ordinary. They are, as the artist states, "an unabashed celebration of the glorious light that is the Golden Gate."". "Yet Misrach's Golden Gate photographs also offer a commentary on the politics of the view - the relationship of wealth, power, and privilege at the beginning of the twenty-first century. They stand in between popular narratives about this region and its unique history - about Alcatraz and Angel Island, the Marin Headlands and the Presidio, the Ferry Pier and the Greensward, all magnificent assets of the Bay Area. Not unlike the grand views of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century painting, the Golden Gate pictures offer more than ocular pleasure - they represent a cultural and political landmark that, often photographed, reveals something deeper under Misrach's penetrating gaze." "Misrach's photographs are accompanied here by two illuminating essays; one by noted art historian T.J. Clark and the other by geographer Richard Walker."--BOOK JACKET.