Enigmatic Stream: Industrial Landscapes of the Lower Mississippi River

The exhibit from the project Enigmatic Stream consists of twenty-one black-and-white photographs and is a special advance preview of a major museum exhibit scheduled to premiere at The Historic New Orleans Collection the following year.

The images depict the Mississippi River industrial corridor from Baton Rouge to New Orleans. Sexton's photographs, made between 2003 and 2016 mainly with the Leica M Monochrom, present the industrial structures and activities that line both banks of the country's largest waterway.

Excerpts from the exhibition catalog for Enigmatic Stream:

“I am intrigued by the unrelenting human effort to exploit the river's commercial potential . . . [and] the industrial design of this landscape. It is engineering in its purest form, unfettered by aesthetic issues, artistic aspiration, or pretension. . . . And yet . . . the landscape is filled with incongruity and mystery.” —Richard Sexton

“There is . . . a majesty and audaciousness about humanity's corporate additions to the river landscape. They are awesome, in the nineteenth-century use of the word . . . equally tinged with both beauty and horror.” —Paul Schneider, essayist and author of Old Man River: The Mississippi River in North American History

“The Mississippi is sinuous, mysterious, and fluid—at odds with the angular, obvious, and rigid structures that line its banks or float on its surface. Sexton's overriding viewpoint is one that celebrates the juxtaposition of this natural feature with the complex man-made structures that are born from its existence.” —John H. Lawrence, essayist and director of museum programs at The Historic New Orleans Collection

Book: Enigmatic Stream: Industrial Landscapes of the Lower Mississippi River

When

June 9, 2018

Where

Leica Store Miami, 372 Miracle Mile, Coral Gables