and I hadn’t heard of his-- we didn’t know each other-- but I had these big prints of the effigies around
the studio that really resonated with him, and we’ve been collaborating ever since.
ANDREA: The book is deeply thoughtful. The whole project is awe-inspiring but I feel sad when I look
at the book. The photos are at once beautiful and disturbing. I’m wondering how you felt after going
out with your camera for a day. What was your average day like? Did it affect you emotionally in any
way? Because, for me, it usually doesn’t when I’m out photographing, but then when I come home I’m
left with something. Do you agree?
RICHARD: Right, and it’s interesting. I wonder about this all the time; about war photojournalists or
people who are photographing people dying. I think it’s like being a brain surgeon. You’re doing a job.
You’re not thinking, “Oh, I’m opening up this p erson’s brain and their guts are spilling out.” No, you
think, “I’m doing a job,” and you stay focused. But when I’m out there photographing it’s disturbing
for sure. I see a lot of things that are disturbing, but I put that aside so I can get the job done. This is
something that human beings can do. People sometimes have to set aside their emotions and do the
job at hand. And then I come back and think about it. A lot of stuff has haunted me and disturbed me
and, you know, you try to reconcile the work that you do and make it positive. When I sell work I try
to give money back to these organizations. We do fundraisers and things like that because the work
isn’t detached from the reality.
ANDREA: You have agreed in the past with Roland Barthes’ statement that, “the camera is a clock.”
How, if at all, does Border Cantos function as a timepiece?
RICHARD: For me, after almost 50 years of being a photographer, the images I’ve made really do
measure particular moments in time. Every photograph in a sense corresponds to a specific instance
in my life. So the camera functions as an existential clock, if you will. And my pictures at the border,
standing in front of a particular wall, a particular human effigy, a particular slashed water bottle, do the
same: they call forth an exact moment. We all have that experience with family snapshots and albums,
I think. On another level, the border project itself, and all of the photographs cumulatively, reflect this
historical moment. They are another measure of time, another kind of clock.
ANDREA: Guillermo is an artist who finds music in both objects and images. In your opinion, do your
photographs possess a sound, or are they inherently silent?
RICHARD: Definitely silent. They are a foil for Guillermo’s sound pieces, and vice versa.
ANDREA: How did you like collaborating with Guillermo?
RICHARD: I had only collaborated with another artist once before, Kate Orff for Petrochemical Amer-
ica which was a great experience, and obviously a very different project. The thing is, and I was
talking to Guillermo the other night about this, you can decide you want to do something collabora-
tively, but if it’s not the right match it’s just not going to work. So you’ve got to be lucky. The fact
that Guillermo and I met at that event and it all came together is kind of remarkable. I mean, again,
I knock on wood. Now the project is over. The last show just came down in New York at Pace last
week, so that part of our relationship is over and we’ll go do our different things. I cannot help but
reflect upon how lucky I was to collaborate with Guillermo. We were like two jazz musicians riffing
off each other for four years.
ANDREA: Do you truly believe that objects contain the “animus” of the humans that once possessed
and used them, or is this a purely metaphorical aspect of your and Guillermo’s work?
RICHARD: I think for Guillermo this is a more literal experience going back to his Meso-American
roots. You’d have to ask him. For me, I do not literally experience the animus of each object per se,
Previous spread: Richard Misrach, Wall (post and wire mesh), Douglas, Arizona, 2014.
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