Petrochemical America
Aperture Foundation
designed with the authors Richard Misrach and Kate Orff
diagrams and drawings by SCAPE
Richard Misrach is an American photographer known for his photographs of human intervention in landscapes and for his influence on large-scale color photography.
Kate Orff is an assistant professor at Columbia University and founder and design director of SCAPE, a landscape architecture studio in Manhattan.
The book is composed of two parts. The first is a series of photographs by Richard Misrach from his series, Cancer Alley. The series is a haunting photographic record of Louisiana’s Chemical Corridor first begun in the mid 1990s and continued in 2010. Part two is the Ecological Atlas—a series of “throughlines”—speculative drawings developed through research and mapping of data from the region designed by Kate Orff and her team at SCAPE.
Tucked into the back cover of the book is the Glossary of Terms and Conditions for a Post-Petrochemical Culture. The Glossary weaves together analysis of local environmental conditions with case studies, tools, and practices that are models for change.
