Richard Misrach

All those wondering how photographer Richard Misrach gets his God's-eye views won't be getting any answers from the artist. Is he hovering in a helicopter? Standing on a cherry picker? The mystery is everything. "There's a strange sense of voyeurism" created by the unusual vantage point, he argues, that would be lost in focusing on such pedestrian details as camera, lens, location.

Photographer Richard Misrach wasn't exactly surprised when his latest series of pictures drew skepticism from friends and dealers in 1994. He realized the photographs were not the usual landscape images. There were no horizon lines, no trees, no clouds, just . . . skies: rich fields of color, blues, reds, grays. But Misrach was just as certain that these minimalist photographs were an important new layer to his 18-year examination of the Southwestern desert landscape.