In 1975 Richard Misrach first took his camera into the desert of the American West. Working at night, he used long exposure times and a strobe flash to produce eerie images of the desolate, uninhabited landscape. He experimented with the printing process, making split-toned prints that heighten the blacks and whites while imparting a coppery glow to the background. In the desert, Misrach has said, “the severity of the landscape sets cultural artifacts off in dramatic relief . . . it epitomizes the extremes of the human condition.” This project paved the way for his well-known, still-ongoing series on the environmental and cultural implications of the American West, Desert Cantos.