For nearly four decades, Richard Misrach has photographed
the American West, producing a series of poetic essays (“Cantos,” he calls
them) that explore the relationship of man and nature. In 1990, near the Nevada
Nuclear Test Site, he stumbled upon two bullet-riddled issues of Playboy that had been used by locals for
a perverse, misogynistic round of target practice. As he turned the magazine
pages, Misrach found, of course, that the violence aimed at the women on the
cover in fact shot through all layers of American society found within, from
pop celebrities to shampoo ads.