API 15-065-23025 Harrold West, KS 2012

Mishka Henner made this image, API 15-065-23025 Harrold West, KS, using photographic processes. It's all about these earthy tones, like a landscape reduced to its barest essentials, and I find that so striking. The texture in this image is just so cool. You can almost feel the grit and the dryness of the earth under your feet. Those lines crisscrossing the surface, like the land has been combed, but also wounded, I'm drawn to the little cluster of marks near the center, where everything seems to converge. It’s like a tiny vortex, sucking you into the heart of the image. This recalls the work of someone like Vija Celmins, who is also obsessed with rendering the surface of things. Ultimately, I think Henner's work, like Celmins', is all about seeing, about noticing the details and thinking about what we do and how we do it. There's no one right answer here, and that's what makes it so exciting.