Of all the exhibitions I went to see in New York, this was the one I was most excited about after I'd seen details of it online. I think I'd seen some of the photographs before - or maybe it was from the first series of beach shots by Misrach- and I'd liked them,but the reason why I was most intrigued was because of the size of the prints. In the Deadpan chapter in "The Photograph as Contemporary Art" it talks about the importance of size of the prints and I'd been looking forward to seeing photographs at this scale - here was my chance.
The series was called "On The Beach 2.0" and consisted of large and detailed photographs of people on the beach and in the sea taken from above (presumably in a helicopter). The most compelling photographs to me were those of the sea. They stood at about 8 feet tall and really towered over you as you viewed them.
Some of the photographs were just of the sea, in various lights. 3 of these were presented next to each other, they were subtly but significantly different - more variety of the sea could have been captured, but instead it looked like it was the same sea, same day, just a few hours apart. It had a strange emotional effect to stand in front of them. The power, immensity and beauty of the sea was somehow captured and boxed and presented for view. It was strangely evocative of experiencing the beauty of the sea in it's real form - even though it was from a perspective that is not usually seen. It seemed to bring back the experience and emotion of seeing the sea.
Other sea photographs actually contained a human figure in the centre of the picture. Sometimes the figures weren't immediately obvious, instead what you see first is a disturbance in the sea,which then invites you to step closer to the photograph, and then closer still, with each step you expect to find that the photograph has stopped working and has somehow become distorted (e.g. pixelated), or become an exercise at looking at the medium (like looking close at an oil painting in order to investigate brush strokes), but instead you find yourself looking at a small segment of the picture, which works perfectly at this close range due to the detail captured in the print - in fact you could cut an 8" x 10" segment out and put it in a separate frame. I found this whole experience fascinating and truly novel - it was like looking at the photo on 2 completely different planes, I was stepping back and forth in order to experience each plane.
These photographs were also very emotive. For me they caused me to contemplate the nature of identity, of individuality, of man's role in nature and the act of contemplation and reflection itself.
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