Internationally acclaimed photographer, Richard Misrach presents a body of work that highlights the environmental and ecological degradation of a passage of the Mississippi river, between Baton Rouge and New Orleans, known as Cancer Alley.
Past Exhibition
Revisiting the South: Richard Misrach’s Cancer Alley
June 2 – October 7, 2012
Home, Destrehan, Louisiana, negative 1998, print 2012
“Throughout Cancer Alley homes, schools, and playgrounds are situated yards from behemoth industrial complexes. Residents within a one-mile radius of factories are subjected to significant air and water pollution as well as noxious odors and industrial noise. Many communities along the River Road live in abject poverty. The quality of life in Louisiana has been rated one of the lowest in the nation. In contrast, extremely favorable taxation policies have helped draw industry to the region. One-quarter of the nation’s petrochemicals are manufactured here. The oil industry alone generates over $65 billion annually.” – Richard MisrachRichard Misrach, American, born 1949, Home, Destrehan, Louisiana, negative 1998, print 2012, Inkjet print, Commissioned with funds from the H. B. and Doris Massey Charitable Trust, Lucinda W. Bunnen, and High Museum of Art Enhancement Fund, 2012.5
Norco Cumulus Cloud, Shell Oil Refinery, Norco, Louisiana, negative 1998, print 2012
“Norco, twenty-five miles upriver from New Orleans, is the site of a massive Shell Oil refinery. Throughout the day, natural-looking clouds, nicknamed “Norco cumulus,” hover over the site, created by the comingling of moisture and volatile hydrocarbons that originate in the process of refining gasoline, jet fuel, cooking oil, and other products. In 2009, the EPA ranked Louisiana as one of the top ten polluters of air and water in the United States.” – Richard MisrachRichard Misrach, American, born 1949, Norco Cumulus Cloud, Shell Oil Refinery, Norco, Louisiana, negative 1998, print 2012, Inkjet print, Commissioned with funds from the H. B. and Doris Massey Charitable Trust, Lucinda W. Bunnen, and High Museum of Art Enhancement Fund, 2012.6
Swamp and Pipeline, Geismar, Louisiana, negative 1998, print 2012
“The industrial pipeline’s backdrop of swampland and twisted trees is a cameo of the tropical ecology that functions like a sponge for effluents from petrochemical waste. Since the 1930s, oil companies have routed an estimated twenty-six thousand miles of pipeline throughout the oil-laden Southern parishes and across the Southern coastal wetlands. A web of canals has been cut through pastures and marshlands. The resulting erosion has been striking, with an area of wetlands the size of Delaware swallowed by the Gulf of Mexico.” – Richard MisrachRichard Misrach, American, born 1949, Swamp and Pipeline, Geismar, Louisiana, negative 1998, print 2012, Inkjet print, Commissioned with funds from the H. B. and Doris Massey Charitable Trust, Lucinda W. Bunnen, and High Museum of Art Enhancement Fund, 2012.7
Cypress Swamp, Alligator Bayou, Prairieville, Louisiana, negative 1998, print 2012
“The twentieth century brought massive clear-cutting of cypress forests by lumber companies. In 1993, 1,500 acres of land and water rights were purchased to preserve the remaining wilderness and create an eco-tourism business and educational center. Called Alligator Bayou, the area boasts 250 species of birds, free roaming alligators and rare giant old-growth cypress trees. Subsequent sewage and human waste pollution from a nearby prison, followed by the timber industry’s attempt to harvest the remaining cypress trees, and most recently, disputes with neighbors over water rights and water usage forced the wilderness area to close down in 2010.” – Richard MisrachRichard Misrach, American, born 1949, Cypress Swamp, Alligator Bayou, Prairieville, Louisiana, negative, 1998, print 2012, Inkjet print, Commissioned with funds from the H. B. and Doris Massey Charitable Trust, Lucinda W. Bunnen, and High Museum of Art Enhancement Fund, 2012.8
Playground and Shell Refinery, Norco, Louisiana, negative 1998, print 2012
“This basketball court is surrounded by an African-American community on one side and the sprawling Shell refinery on the other. Noise and gasoline stench permeate the area. According to a 1993 study, two hundred thousand pounds of carcinogens were emitted into the air that year. The basketball court is all that remains of an all-black elementary school. In 1968, on the eve of the school’s integration through federally court-ordered bussing of the area’s white children, it was burned to the ground and never rebuilt. In 2002, Shell, prompted by decades of complaints and lawsuits, was forced to relocate most of the residents.” – Richard MisrachRichard Misrach, American, born 1949, Playground and Shell Refinery, Norco, Louisiana, negative 1998, print 2012, Inkjet print, Commissioned with funds from the H. B. and Doris Massey Charitable Trust, Lucinda W. Bunnen, and High Museum of Art Enhancement Fund, 2012.10
Hazardous Waste Containment Site, Dow Chemical Corporation, Mississippi River, Plaquemine, Louisiana, negative 1998, print 2012
“Dow Corporation is the largest petrochemical company in Louisiana; it began its operations in the state in 1956. Between 1958 and 1973 Dow buried forty-six thousand tons of toxic waste in unlined pits that now cover more than thirty underground acres. The company attempts to pump the waste back to the surface before it reaches the drinking water aquifer for the city of Plaquemine. These efforts notwithstanding, every time the Mississippi River rises it floods the waste site, likely carrying toxins into the river and polluting the water supply as it makes its way down toward New Orleans.” – Richard MisrachRichard Misrach, American, born 1949, Hazardous Waste Containment Site, Dow Chemical Corporation, Mississippi River, Plaquemine, Louisiana, negative 1998, print 2012, Inkjet print, Commissioned with funds from the H. B. and Doris Massey Charitable Trust, Lucinda W. Bunnen, and High Museum of Art Enhancement Fund, 2012.11
Community Remains, Former Morrisonville Settlement, Dow Chemical Corporation, Plaquemine, Louisiana, negative 1998, print 2012
A rural African American community established since 1870 at a riverside settlement called Australia Point was displaced by the Army Corps of Engineers in 1932 in order to build a levee and relocated to Morrisonville. In the 1950s Dow Chemical expanded into the area, bringing widespread pollution in its wake. Later, the company installed special radios in homes so that the plant could inform people of highway evacuation routes in the event of a spill or accident. By 1989 Dow had decided to buy out most of the residents in the area, dispersing what was left of the original community in order to establish a ‘green’ buffer zone.” —Richard MisrachRichard Misrach, Community Remains, Former Morrisonville Settlement, Dow Chemical Corporation, Plaquemine, Louisiana, negative 1998, print 2012, Inkjet print, Commissioned with funds from the H. B. and Doris Massey Charitable Trust, Lucinda W. Bunnen, and High Museum of Art Enhancement Fund, 2012.9
Holy Rosary Cemetery and Dow Chemical Corporation (Union Carbide Complex), Taft, Louisiana, negative 1998, print 2012
Richard Misrach, Holy Rosary Cemetery and Dow Chemical Corporation (Union Carbide Complex), Taft, Louisiana, negative 1998, print 2012, Inkjet print, Commissioned with funds from the H. B. and Doris Massey Charitable Trust, Lucinda W. Bunnen, and High Museum of Art Enhancement Fund, 2012.12
Tour Guide, Nottoway Plantation, White Castle, Louisiana, negative 1998, print 2012
Richard Misrach, Tour Guide, Nottoway Plantation, White Castle, Louisiana, negative 1998, print 2012
Inkjet print, Commissioned with funds from the H. B. and Doris Massey Charitable Trust, Lucinda W. Bunnen, and High Museum of Art Enhancement Fund, 2012.17
Overview
In 1998, the High commissioned California-based photographer Richard Misrach to create a body of work as part of the Museum’s Picturing the South series.
Misrach studied the ecological degradation of a passage of the Mississippi River between Baton Rouge and New Orleans. This is an area where a number of petro-chemical industries are based and which is sometimes referred to as Cancer Alley. Like the Western landscapes for which Misrach is best known, these photographs challenge viewers with environmental and political concerns while seducing them with evocative and lyrically beautiful large scale prints. In focusing on the delicate state of the Mississippi River, Misrach’s work signals not just the environmental challenges facing the South but also the larger costs of our modern world at the dawn of the twenty first century.
To mark the culmination and publication of this body of work in 2012, more than a decade after the project was initiated, a group of twenty-one large scale prints are presented here. This is the first time that many of these important photographs have been shown to a broad public.
Artist Bio
Born in Los Angeles in 1949, Misrach is internationally recognized for his large-scale color photography. His work is represented in more than 50 museums worldwide including the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum and the High Museum of Art. He has exhibited internationally and was the subject of a mid-career traveling museum survey organized by the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, in 1996.
Misrach is the recipient of numerous awards and honors including four National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships, a Guggenheim Fellowship and the Koret Israel Prize. Most recently, he was the 2008 recipient of the Lucie Award for Achievement in Fine Art. He is represented in New York at Pace/MacGill Gallery, in San Francisco at Fraenkel Gallery and in Los Angeles by Marc Selwyn Fine Art.