Richard Misrach: Rewind

Fraenkel Gallery

Union Square | San Francisco | California | USA

30 Oct, 2025 - 20 Dec, 2025

With Richard Misrach: Rewind, Fraenkel Gallery presents a retrospective look at the artist鈥檚 career, spanning more than five decades. Organized in reverse chronological order, the exhibition ranges from Cargo, Misrach鈥檚 newest series exploring the impact of global trade, to Telegraph 3 A.M., his earliest project, documenting street culture in Berkeley, California in the early 1970s. Highlighting ideas and themes that have consistently driven his work, the exhibition presents photographs made with an array of materials and techniques. Using everything from 35mm film to large-scale digital prints, the show traces Misrach鈥檚 development across the forefront of the medium. Fraenkel Gallery has shown Misrach鈥檚 work since 1985; this will be his seventeenth exhibition with the gallery. A public reception and book signing with the artist will take place on Saturday, November 1, from 2-4pm.

Whether photographing subjects as disparate as environmental disasters or cloud studies, Misrach has always pursued beauty. 鈥淚鈥檝e come to believe that beauty can be a very powerful conveyor of difficult ideas,鈥� says Misrach. 鈥淚t engages people when they might otherwise look away.鈥� The exhibition begins with a 2025 sunrise view of a freighter ship in the San Francisco Bay, printed at more than 5鈥� x 6鈥�. Composed in vivid shades of pink, blue, and violet, the image from Cargo addresses the complex economic systems that shape modern life, and their far-reaching consequences. Other seductive but charged images document the U.S.-Mexico border wall, from the series Border Cantos; Louisiana鈥檚 highly polluted Cancer Alley, from Petrochemical America; and the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, from a series shown here for the first time, 20 years after the storm. Several photographs come from Desert Cantos, Misrach鈥檚 long-running series examining humans鈥� multifaceted relationship with the landscape of the American West.