Border Cantos Border Cantos

With a melding of the artist as documentarian and interpreter, this book includes several suites of photographs drawn from a number of distinct series, or Cantos-some made with a large-format camera as well as an iPhone. It contains a compilation of two dozen sculpture-instruments, graphic scores, instrument designs, and more.

Border Cantospresents a unique collaboration between photographer Richard Misrach and composer Guillermo Galindo. Misrach has been photographing the two-thousand-mile border between the U.S. and Mexico since 2004, with increased focus starting in 2009—resulting in a distinct melding of the artist as documentarian and interpreter. The latest installation in Misrach’s ongoing Desert Cantos series, this book includes several suites of photographs—some made with a large-format camera and others that have been captured with an iPhone. Misrach and Galindo have worked together to create pieces that both report on and transform the artifacts of migration: water bottles, clothing, backpacks, Border Patrol drag tires, spent shotgun shells, ladders, and sections of the Border Wall itself, which Galindo then fashions into instruments to be performed as unique sound-generating devices. He also imagines graphic musical scores, many of which use Misrach’s photographs as points of departure. More than two dozen sculpture-instruments, scores, instrument designs, and prompts to videos of performances by Galindo on the instruments are included in this volume. The interplay of these two practices is explored by critic, journalist, and curator Josh Kun, who contextualizes their collaboration within the evolving political and cultural conversation about the border and immigration—topics of increasing urgency today.

This project presents a unique collaboration between photographer Richard Misrach and composer and performer Guillermo Galindo. Misrach has been photographing the twothousand- mile border between the U.S. and Mexico since 2004, with increased focus since 2009—the latest installation in his ongoing series Desert Cantos, a multi-faceted approach to the study of place and man’s complex relationship to it. Misrach and Galindo have been working together to create pieces that both document and transform the artifacts of migration. Using water bottles, clothing, backpacks, Border Patrol “drag tires,” spent shotgun shells, ladders, and sections of the border wall itself, most of which were collected by Misrach, Galindo fashions instruments to be performed as unique sound-generating devices. He also imagines graphic musical scores, many of which also use Misrach’s photographs as points of departure. A unique melding of the artist as documentarian and interpreter, the book will include several suites of photographs drawn from a number of distinct series, or Cantos—some made with a large-format camera as well as an iPhone. The book will also contain a compilation of two dozen sculpture-instruments, graphic scores, instrument designs, and links to videos of performances by Galindo on the image-inspired instruments.