In Pictures of Paintings, Richard Misrach turns his large-format lens away from the natural desert toward the curated environments of major museums, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Israel Museum. Rather than capturing entire canvases, Misrach focuses on “slices” of masterpieces—edges of frames, isolated gestures, or overlooked corners. By re-photographing these details, he treats the paintings as cultural artifacts that manifest Eurocentric ideologies of Manifest Destiny. The book is an elegant production featuring 73 four-color photographs and four multi-page gatefolds, accompanied by a scholarly essay by Navjotika Kumar and a postscript by Weston Naef. It represents a significant departure for Misrach, bridging the gap between traditional documentary practice and modern appropriation art.
