# Richard Misrach artist context and auction value notes

Canonical page: https://appraisily.com/artist/richard-misrach/
Profile generated: 2026-05-08T09:55:11.475Z
Quality: high confidence, strong sources

## Artist identity

- Birth date: 1949-07-11
- Nationality: American
- Movements: Landscape photography
- Common media: Photography (large-format color)

## About Richard Misrach

Richard Misrach (born 1949, Los Angeles) is an American photographer whose large-format color work has shaped how audiences see the landscapes of the American West. Over a career spanning five decades, he has documented deserts, military testing grounds, petrochemical corridors, flood zones, and fire-damaged terrain, building an archive that curator Anne Wilkes Tucker describes as driven by issues of aesthetics, politics, ecology, and sociology. His long-running Desert Cantos series treats the desert as both subject and metaphor, weaving together beauty and evidence of environmental disruption. Misrach has described his practice as navigating the space between political engagement and aesthetic contemplation. His photographs are held in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art in New York and other major institutions, and he is widely recognized as a leading figure in contemporary landscape photography.

## Common works and media

Collectors most frequently encounter Misrach's work as large-format chromogenic color photographic prints, often depicting desert landscapes, bodies of water, night skies, or evidence of environmental alteration such as bomb craters, burned terrain, and industrial infrastructure. The Desert Cantos series comprises numerous sub-groups of images. Later bodies of work, including studies of the Mississippi River flooding and the aftermath of wildfires in California, also circulate in the photography market. Prints are typically issued in limited editions, and both vintage and later prints appear at auction.

## Market and appraisal context

Misrach's photographs appear regularly in the fine-art photography market, with large-format chromogenic color prints being the most common format at auction. The Desert Cantos series and other signature bodies of work attract the strongest collector interest. Value is influenced by print size, edition position, date of printing, provenance, and condition. Institutional holdings at museums such as MoMA reinforce long-term market stability. Because Misrach has produced work across multiple series and formats, accurate appraisal requires identifying the specific series, print edition, and exhibition history of the individual work.

## Appraisily data basis

Appraisily artist pages combine artist identity research from museum records, library authority files, and published sources with auction records, auction-house context, sale dates, realized prices, and comparable lots when those records are available. For Richard Misrach, identity data is sourced from the Getty Union List of Artist Names, the Library of Congress Name Authority File, VIAF, the RKD, and the Museum of Modern Art.

## Sources

- RKD: https://rkd.nl/en/explore/artists/385689
- Library of Congress: https://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/n86060708
- Wikidata: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q7327841
- Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Misrach
- Getty Vocabulary Program: https://vocab.getty.edu/page/ulan/500110670
- VIAF: https://viaf.org/viaf/32067827/
- The Museum of Modern Art: https://www.moma.org/artists/4022