Eerie, strangely evocative photos of container ships at sea

At 155 million sq km, the Pacific Ocean covers one third of the earth’s surface and is greater in size than all the continents combined. Its vastness is cut in half on global maps, as though it is simply too grand to conceptualise in its totality. Perhaps nothing could be truer when seen through the lens of photographer Richard Misrach. 

In 1997, he began Golden Gate, a series showcasing the jewel-toned bridge set at the edge of the earth. Like British painter J.M.W. Turner, whose 19^th century seascapes chronicled empire casting its fate against nature in a bid for dominion over the globe, Misrach’s hypnotic photographs evoked a Romantic ideal both sublime and subversive. 

A quarter of a century later, Misrach returned to the San Francisco Bay, this time to photograph the monumental ships sailing in and out of the Port of Oakland, for the new book Richard Misrach: Cargo (Aperture). Featuring 75 large format photographs made between 2021 – 2024, the book is an epic portrait of place that recalls Claude Monet’s 1872 painting, Impression, Sunrise, which gave name to a new way of seeing.

• Read next: Memories of San Francisco’s 1990s radical lesbian scene

“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.

• Read next: A glimpse inside the world’s most secretive arms fairs

Cargo is the metaphorical tip of the iceberg, the rising tide of climate collapse relying on humanity’s propensity for collective solipsism. Out of sight, out of mind, unless, like Misrach, you choose to look. ​“I’d go out there and watch the way the light illuminated these things like sculptures and that became a way to meditate on their purpose,” he says. ​“When you do that, you start to unpack an encyclopaedia of information and thought. There are issues there. I want people to meditate and think about it.”

Richard Misrach: Cargo is published by Aperture.

Miss Rosen is a freelance arts and photography writer, follow her on X.

Buy your copy of Huck 82 here.

Enjoyed this article? Follow Huck on Instagram and sign up to our newsletter for more from the cutting edge of sport, music and counterculture.

Support stories like this by becoming a member of Club Huck.