With its poetic sensitivity to color and compositional detail, Richard Misrach’s work straddles interests in expansive natural landscapes and the detrimental effects of massive agricultural and industrial activities on the environment. In the 1980s, he photographed the ill-fated Salton Sea, a large lake in Southern California accidentally created in the early 20th century when a manmade irrigation canal failed. At first a thriving tourist spot and recreational area, the Sea deteriorated as runoff from surrounding agricultural land caused pesticides and fertilizers to poison its water and kill its fish. Now in the wake of California’s ongoing drought, the all but abandoned area is described as an “apocalyptic landscape.” In Misrach’s prescient Red Beacon image, a foreboding, artificial red flare disrupts the otherwise serene blue of the waters. In Holy Rosary Cemetery (Crucifix), Taft, Louisiana, the artist poignantly juxtaposes the crosses, headstones, and flowers of a local cemetery with the smokestacks, electrical wires, and scaffolds of a chemical plant. The jarring differences of scale and contrasts of white and gray tones unfold under an ominous sky, implying an insurmountable struggle between a dying community and the industry that overshadows it. This work is part of Misrach’s Cancer Alley, a series completed in 1998, which documents the ecological degradation of a stretch of land along the Mississippi River between Baton Rouge and New Orleans.