“Cargo was a celebration of extraordinary light – the atmosphere of Golden Gate,” Misrach says. “I literally fixed my 8×10 camera the same and didn’t move it at all. The change every day is not my perspective but the weather changing in different and beautiful ways.”
At the same time, Cargo is a portrait of neoliberalism reaching its pathological conclusion, following the principle of profit over people. It is a feat of engineering and commerce hiding in plain sight – the proverbial elephant in the room. “Cargo ships are loaded with history. They were a revolution in global trade, but at the same time 3% of global warming is caused by these ships,” Misrach says. “They’re just so extraordinary, and they’re also invisible. We’ve been driving past these things for years, and because they’re omnipresent, we don’t see them.”
Misrach’s photographs are marked by ambiguity that meets you where you are, be it the first flush of wonder at the mythical Pacific Ocean in all its glory, or casting a knowing eye at capitalism’s insatiable armada making its way to the shore. “The ships are troublesome reminders of industrial civilisation at its most aggressive, behemoths that cross the Pacific to feed American appetites for fuel and manufactured goods,” Rebecca Sunlit writes in the book’s introduction.