In “The Sky Book,” Richard Misrach shifts his focus from the terrestrial scars of the American West to the heavens above. For over two decades, Misrach photographed the desert by day and night, eventually concentrating on the sky as a standalone subject. The images range from luminous color fields of peach and purple to complex “Heavenly Bodies” captured through all-night exposures that render stars as concentric arcs. Contextualized with precise data on time and location, the work roots the celestial in the political and earthly, reminiscent of 19th-century expeditionary photography while achieving a sublime, Rothko-esque abstraction.
