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Title
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1991: The Oakland-Berkeley Fire Aftermath, Photographs by Richard Misrach
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Artist/Creator
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Richard Misrach
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Description
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Photographs Richard Misrach made in the days after the October 1991 firestorm that swept through the Oakland and Berkeley hills, shown at BAM/PFA to mark the fire's twentieth anniversary. The Bay Area photographer entered the fire zone with an eight-by-ten-inch view camera, recording both stark vistas and intimate details of destroyed homes: a melted refrigerator, a mailbox, a stairway, a swimming pool among scorched trees. The forty photographs, unseen in the twenty years since the fire, included fourteen large-scale prints whose immense scale invites viewers into Misrach's quiet elegies, and a grid of twenty-six smaller prints forming an elegy wall. The Oakland Museum of California presented its own forty-photograph selection at the same time, and many of the prints entered BAM/PFA's collection as gifts of the artist. A companion exhibition, Richard Misrach: Photographs from the Collection, drew on series such as Desert Cantos and Bravo 20 Bombing Range that explore the complex relationship between humans and nature.
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Event Type
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Exhibition
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Date
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October 12, 2011 – February 5, 2012
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Location
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Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, 2626 Bancroft Way, Berkeley, California
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Organizer
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Curated by Lucinda Barnes, Chief Curator and Director of Programs and Collections
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Geographic Scope
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City / Municipality
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Climate & Ecology Themes
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Fire
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Loss and Damage
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Urban Landscapes and Infrastructures
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Discipline / Field
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Arts & Design
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Concepts
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Loss and Grief
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Memory and History
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Ecological Domain / Habitat
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Urban / Wildland Interface
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Audience / Engagement Type
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Public / General Audience
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Methods & Approaches
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Storytelling / Narrative Practice
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Rights
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Rights held by artist or creator
