Richard Misrach and Guillermo Galindo: Border Cantos - (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

This project presents a unique collaboration between photographer Richard Misrach and composer and performer Guillermo Galindo. Misrach has been photographing the 2,000-mile border between the US and Mexico since 2004, with increased focus since 2009--the latest installation in his ongoing series Desert Cantos, a multifaceted approach to the study of place and man's complex relationship to it. Misrach and Galindo have been working together to create pieces that both document and transform the artifacts of migration. Using water bottles, clothing, backpacks, Border Patrol drag tires, spent shotgun shells, ladders and sections of the border wall itself, most of which were collected by Misrach, Galindo fashions instruments to be performed as unique sound-generating devices. He also imagines graphic musical scores, many of which also use Misrach's photographs as points of departure. A unique melding of the artist as documentarian and interpreter, the book includes several suites of photographs drawn from a number of distinct series or Cantos, some made with a large-format camera as well as an iPhone. The book contains a compilation of two dozen sculpture-instruments, graphic scores, instrument designs and links to videos of performances by Galindo.

From the Back Cover

Border Cantospresents a unique collaboration between photographer Richard Misrach and composer Guillermo Galindo. Misrach has been photographing the two-thousand-mile border between the U.S. and Mexico since 2004, with increased focus starting in 2009--resulting in a distinct melding of the artist as documentarian and interpreter. The latest installation in Misrach's ongoing Desert Cantos series, this book includes several suites of photographs--some made with a large-format camera and others that have been captured with an iPhone. Misrach and Galindo have worked together to create pieces that both report on and transform the artifacts of migration: water bottles, clothing, backpacks, Border Patrol drag tires, spent shotgun shells, ladders, and sections of the Border Wall itself, which Galindo then fashions into instruments to be performed as unique sound-generating devices. He also imagines graphic musical scores, many of which use Misrach's photographs as points of departure. More than two dozen sculpture-instruments, scores, instrument designs, and prompts to videos of performances by Galindo on the instruments are included in this volume. The interplay of these two practices is explored by critic, journalist, and curator Josh Kun, who contextualizes their collaboration within the evolving political and cultural conversation about the border and immigration--topics of increasing urgency today.

Review Quotes

A new collaborative book of photography and art, Border Cantos, by photographer Richard Misrach and experimental composer Guillermo Galindo, captures some of the ostentatious absurdity of the border wall and the calamities, cultures, and artifacts that surround it. Bilingual, multi-genre, international, and multi-media, Border Cantos (Aperture, 2016) breaks down the obvious duality of any wall--that you are either on this side, or on that side--and exposes the human and environmental consequences of decades of political recklessness. -The Nation
Amid all the political talk of building a wall between the U.S. and Mexico, Richard Misrach and Guillermo Galindo offer a poignant meditation on the patchwork borderline that now exists. -American Photo, Best Photography Book of Summer 2016
The pair collaborated in a traveling exhibition as well as this catalog, in which Misrach's visual artistry renders the desolate scenes all the more stunning. -American Photo, Best Photography Book of Summer 2016