RICHARD MISRACH LECTURE & BOOK SIGNING

SF Camerawork is pleased to present a lecture and book signing with Richard Misrach on the occasion of the publication of Misrach's acclaimed new monograph, Destroy This Memory. Published by Aperture on August 29th—marking the fifth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina—this powerful book presents previously unpublished and starkly compelling material, all of which Misrach shot with his 4 MP pocket camera. Created between October and December 2005, one month after the storm, Destroy This Memory is an affecting reminder of the physical and psychological impact of Hurricane Katrina. Rather than simply surveying the damage, Misrach—who has photographed the region regularly since the 1970s, most notably for his ongoing Cancer Alley project—found himself drawn to the hurricane-inspired graffiti: messages scrawled in spray paint, crayons, chalk, or whatever materials happened to be on hand. At turns threatening, desperate, clinical, and even darkly humorous, the phrases he captured—the only text that appears in the book—offer unique and revealing human perspectives on the devastation and shock left in the wake of this disaster.

Artist's royalties for this project are being donated to the Make It Right Foundation, which is currently rebuilding the Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans.

Richard Misrach (born in Los Angeles, 1949) is credited with helping pioneer the renaissance of color photography and large-scale presentation in the 1970s. He has exhibited extensively, and his work is held in the permanent collections of prestigious institutions such as the Museum of Modern Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, all in New York; National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; and the Art Institute of Chicago. He is a recipient of numerous awards, including the Guggenheim Fellowship and four fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts. Misrach is represented by Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco; Pace-MacGill Gallery, New York; and Marc Selwyn Fine Art, Los Angeles. He lives in Berkeley, California.

Free to the public. Seating is limited, so RSVP at info@sfcamerawork.org or 415.512.2020 x 102.

7 pm