Richard Misrach/Kate Orff
Petrochemical America is a command, a book and an exhibition at Aperture as well as many panel discussions in New York and across the United States. The whole represents a major historical research on the reality and consequences of petrochemical industry in the region known for several years as Cancer Alley, a Mississippi corridor that stretches 150 miles between New Orleans and Baton Rouge. The approach is regional, and can eventually be read in a national or international perspective, but it is not the intention of the authors. They have decided to focus on a sacrificed area in order to translate the scale of a phenomenon that is a direct consequence of American unrestrained consumerism. Plastic – whose manufacturing, distribution and daily ubiquity generate an extreme toxicity – primarily affects people who live near the factories that produce it. Richard Misrach, accompanied by landscape architect Kate Orff and the team of her agency Scape, have attempted to make this reality visible thanks to a system of layers, by mixing a photograph and illustrations on a same support. The result consitutes an effort to understand the complex web of industrial, ecological and human stories that may have given shape to an image. Drawings, diagrams and maps are superimposed to a landscape and form an explicit visualization of geographic and scientific data. The coexistence of scientific and aesthetic elements results in a new form of storytelling, paving the way for a creative way to engage people. Some photographs are left blank, printed in a giant format in the manner of architecure sketches and covering the walls of Aperture gallery. These images, along with dense informative captions, illustrate the ambiguity of the visible. What might appear as a pastoral landscape, with its typical cumulus and the city shape in the background, hides a plant whose hydrocarbon emanations draw a dense and permanent cloud in the sky. The book is organized in the same way, with Misrach’s photographs only in a first chapter. Follows the “ecological atlas” by Kate Orff, divided into seven chapters that reflects the extent of her research. In an effort to denounce the situation but more importantly to imagine solutions, the book is supplemented by a glossary. This additional book is a guide of proposals for the future, an attempt to define an alternative and diversified economy that would reduce the impact of petrochemical industry.
BOOK
Petrochemical America
Photographies de Richard Misrach
Ecological Atlas par Kate Orff
240 pages (plus 24-page insert), 150 images couleurs
80 $
Editions Aperture
EXHIBITIONS
. Richard Misrach / Kate Orff « Petrochemical America »
August 25 – October 6, 2012
Aperture Foundation
547 West 27th Street, 4th Floor
New York, NY 10001
USA
www.aperture.org
. Richard Misrach: The Desert Cantos
September 13 – October 27, 2012
Robert Mann Gallery
525 West 26th Street –
New York – NY 10001
USA
www.robertmann.com
