{"data":{"id":"8193","type":"artwork","attributes":{"id":8193,"topgoose_id":9160,"portfolio_id":null,"tms_id":8193,"title":"Bomb Crater and Destroyed Convoy, Bravo 20 Bombing Range, Nevada","display_artist_text":"Richard Misrach","display_date":"1986, printed 1993","accession_number":"93.72","dimensions":"Sheet: 40 1/8 × 50 1/8 in. (101.9 × 127.3 cm)\r\nImage: 38 7/8 × 49 1/8 in. (98.7 × 124.8 cm)\r\nFrame: 48 1/4 × 58 1/4 × 1 3/4 in. (122.6 × 148 × 4.4 cm)","medium":"Chromogenic print","department":"collection","classification":"Photographs","credit_line":"Purchase, with funds from The Sondra and Charles Gilman Jr. Foundation, Inc.","is_virtual":false,"is_portfolio":false,"portfolio_tms_id":null,"portfolio":null,"edition":"1/3","publication_info":"","description":"\u003cp\u003eRichard Misrach, \u003cem\u003eBomb Crater and Destroyed Convoy, Bravo 20 Bombing Range, Nevada\u003c/em\u003e, 1986, printed 1993. Chromogenic print, sheet: 40 1/8 × 50 1/8 in. (101.9 × 127.3 cm)\r\nImage: 38 7/8 × 49 1/8 in. (98.7 × 124.8 cm)\r\nFrame: 48 1/4 × 58 1/4 × 1 3/4 in. (122.6 × 148 × 4.4 cm). Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; purchase, with funds from The Sondra and Charles Gilman Jr. Foundation, Inc. 93.72. © Richard Misrach 1986\u003c/p\u003e","object_label":"\u003cp\u003eMost of Richard Misrach’s work, including the series \u003ci\u003eBravo 20: The Bombing of the American West\u003c/i\u003e, falls under the broad theme of what he calls \u003ci\u003eDesert Cantos\u003c/i\u003e–a “canto” being a section of a long poem. For the \u003ci\u003eBravo 20 \u003c/i\u003eseries, Misrach spent nearly two years in an isolated northwest corner of Nevada’s Great Basin desert, prompted by a recent discovery that the United States Navy had been illegally treating these public lands as a bombing range since 1952. Using his van as a makeshift darkroom, Misrach documented this besieged area, which the military euphemistically calls “Bravo 20.” In \u003ci\u003eBomb Crater and Destroyed Convoy, Bravo 20 Bombing Range, Nevada\u003c/i\u003e, the Humboldt Mountains rise up behind an apocalyptic landscape. A giant crater dominates the picture, surrounded by the scattered, rusted remains of a blown-up military vehicle. Filled with blood-colored water, the crater suggests an open wound. Here, water, the essential life-sustaining source, has been literally and symbolically contaminated. Nonetheless, the troubling composition is imbued with formal elegance. As Misrach has remarked: “I believe that beauty is a very powerful conveyor of difficult ideas. It engages people when they might otherwise look away.”\u003c/p\u003e","ai_alt_text":"A shallow crater with a red salt pool in a dry desert surrounded by rusty vehicle wrecks.","alt_text":null,"visual_description":null,"on_view":false,"created_at":"2017-08-30T16:25:23.000-04:00","updated_at":"2026-02-06T12:00:20.936-05:00","images":[{"id":99485,"url":"https://whitneymedia.org/assets/artwork/8193/93_72_cropped.jpg"}]},"relationships":{"artists":{"data":[{"id":"3945","type":"artist"}]}}}}