Richard Misrach is among the most influential, prolific, and internationally recognized photographers working today. Best known for his epic ongoing project, Desert Cantos --an extensive and unique photographic exploration of place--Misrach consistently addresses political and social issues through the adaptation of different photographic strategies, even as he expands notions of traditional landscape practice, and builds a complex and poignant document of American culture. His subjects have included manmade floods and fires, military bombing ranges, mass graves of dead animals, sublime night skies, and details of paintings housed in the museums of the Southwest. In one recent series, On the Beach --which was inspired by Nevil Shute"s postapocalyptic novel of the 1950s--Misrach"s color photographs deal with the human figure seen at a distance on an unspecified beach or in the water, observed from an unsettling and difficult-to-identify point of view located high above. ...