© Christian Marclay, “Silence (The Electric Chair)”

Throughout photography’s history, photographers have strived to document a new perspective on the world around them. But an exhibition on view at the Fraenkel Gallery in San Francisco explores what gallery owner Jeffrey Fraenkel calls “a parallel history in which photographers and other artists have attempted to describe by photographic means that which is not so readily seen: thought, time, ghosts, god, dreams.” “The Unphotographable,” on view through March 23, features roughly 50 works by photographers from every era and genre who use a variety of techniques to depict the unseen, the hidden or the merely imagined. They include pioneers like Alfred Stieglitz, Clarence John Laughlin, Diane Arbus and Man Ray, contemporary photographers such as Adam Fuss, Idris Khan, Chris McCaw, Jay DeFeo, Wolfgang Tillmans and Paul Graham, and some photographers who worked anonymously. Their images range from the abstract to the spooky. (more…)

All Photos © Richard Misrach. Courtesy of Fraenkel Gallery, SF/ Marc Selwyn Fine Arts, LA/ Pace MacGill Gallery, NY.

Richard Misrach: Graecism, a collection of six vintage dye transfer prints taken between 1979-1981, is currently on view at the Yancey Richardson Gallery. Shot during his travels in Greece and Italy as a Guggenheim Fellow, the works mark the end of Misrach’s nighttime studies and the beginning of his color photography. He shot the images of ancient architectural sites, including the Parthenon and the Roman Forum, at dusk and at night with strobe lighting and long exposures. “Misrach’s long exposures emphasize the passage of time in the terms of the celestial” Yancey Richardson Gallery says. “His wandering, exploratory eye lends to the feeling of communing with the spirits of a long lost civilization.” To see more of Misrach’s work click here.

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