Two series made years apart in starkly different places by two noted photographers, Lee Friedlander and Richard Misrach, converge at Stanford’s Cantor Arts Center. Friedlander answered a commission from Cray Research, Inc., then the world’s leading maker of supercomputers, to document its facility in Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin. The High Museum of Art in Atlanta invited Misrach, a Bay Area resident, to contribute to its “Picturing the South” project. Shooting in color, unlike Friedlander, he chose to examine the social and ecological devastation wrought by the petrochemical industries of southern Louisiana.
"Revisiting the South: Richard Misrach's Cancer Alley" and "Lee Friedlander: The Cray Photographs" are concurrent exhibitions that run at Stanford's Cantor Arts Center through June 16. Read the Kenneth Baker review.
Seen here: "Cypress Swamp, Alligator Bayou,
Prairieville, Louisiana" (negative 1998, print 2012) Inkjet print by Richard Misrach. 60" x 72" High Museum of Art, Atlanta