1. Research a photo-book and describe the story it is communicating  with reference to subject-matter, genre and approach to image-making.

Petrochemical America

Petrochemical America is a book created by Richard Misrach and Kate Orff and focuses on  in-depth analysis of the causes of decades of environmental abuse along the largest river system in North America. Even more critically, the project offers an extensively researched guidebook to the way in which the petrochemical industry has permeated every area of contemporary life. This focuses on the how the landscape has been altered because of the chemicals that are now used in American society have changed the appearance and health of their environment.

In 1998, the High Museum of Art in Atlanta asked Richard Misrach to produce work for their “Picturing the South” series. Misrach decided to focus on “Cancer Alley,” the Mississippi corridor that is a hundred and fifty miles between New Orleans and Baton Rouge, a decade later, the Museum asked Misrach to return to Cancer Alley to shoot, and then combined this new work with the original series for an exhibition and book called “Petrochemical America,” published by Aperture. In re-approaching the project, Misrach hoped to find avenues of environmental and structural change in this region and for the nation.

2. Who is the photographer? Why did he/she make it? (intentions/ reasons) Who is it for? (audience) How was it received? (any press, reviews, awards, legacy etc.)

Richard Misrach is one of the most influential photographers of his generation. In the 1970s, he helped pioneer the renaissance of color photography and large-scale presentation that are in widespread practice today. Best known for his ongoing series, Desert Cantos, a multi-faceted approach to the study of place and man’s complex relationship to it, he has worked in the landscape for over 40 years.

Petrochemical America represents a unique collaboration between photographer Richard Misrach and landscape architect Kate Orff. Presented in two parts, the first features Misrach’s photographs of the Mississippi River industrial corridor, stretching from Baton Rouge to New Orleans—one of America’s most industrialized places, and a region that first garnered public attention as “Cancer Alley” because of the unusual occurrences of cancer in the area.

3. Deconstruct the narrative, concept and design of the book and apply theory above when considering:

• Book in hand: how does it feel?
• Paper and ink: use of different paper/ textures/ colour or B&W or both.
• Format, size and orientation: portraiture/ landscape/ square/ A5, A4, A3 / number of pages.
• Binding, soft/hard cover. image wrap/dust jacket. saddle stitch/swiss binding/ Japanese stab-binding/ leperello
• Cover: linen/ card. graphic/ printed image. embossed/ debossed. letterpress/ silkscreen/hot-stamping.
• Title: literal or poetic / relevant or intriguing.
• Narrative: what is the story/ subject-matter. How is it told?
• Structure and architecture: how design/ repeating motifs/ or specific features develops a concept or construct a narrative.
• Design and layout: image size on pages/ single page, double-spread/ images/ grid, fold- outs/ inserts.
• Editing and sequencing: selection of images/ juxtaposition of photographs/ editing process.
• Images and text: are they linked? Introduction/ essay/ statement by artists or others.  Use of captions (if any.)

This book contains images of Cancer Valley, prints of oil patterns, ‘swamp and pipeline’ throughout Louisiana, a locational map of industrial land map along river road, Prairieville (Louisiana), Mississippi. There is also constructed images of landscape impacts of petrochemistry and land patterns of the industrial corridor over time which gives details regarding how much the landscape has changed.

The whole book is formatted in a landscape form, with the first section of the book having the location of the image on the left hand side of the page and then the full size colour image on the right hand side. The second part of the book is filled with images like the one above, not taken by Misrach but constructed as part of the book as it adds more purpose to his images, and gives a clearer indication of how much humans have changed the landscape.

The whole cover of the book is hardback with a printed image and contains in my opinion, one of the most successful of all of Richard Misrach’s images, this means that the cover is very eye-catching and draws in the viewer. Furthermore, the title of the book is pretty intriguing as it makes you want to explore what Misrach and Orff’s definition of ‘Petrochemical America’ is and whether this relates to a positive or negative event or theme. As the title is very explicit, it increases curiosity within the reader. The story is told in a very clever way, as the first part illustrates the beautiful and natural landscapes, and then afterwards many scientific like images and placed in, with lots of accurate information regarding chemicals population increases. Continuing, the book travels back to the natural landscape images, however, these images aren’t as aesthetic, this third section is also very much focused on cities and industrial life.

Despite the images above being filled with dark colours and tones, the majority of the pages in the first section are pretty blank, with only one sentence of just the title of the images written down, all of the text in the next sections are very relevant to the images shown, and all description’s are detailed but clear. I think its important to note that all of the sections are well organised, section one and two very much juxtapose each other, whilst section three is a very good mix of both, this is good as it makes you feel like the general consensus of the book is coming to an end, with everything being well finished off.