Mitch Epstein: American Nature

Seminal photo series, together with new works, demonstrate Epstein's unflinching documentation of America's landscapes ravaged by climate change

The culmination of a 20-year odyssey by one of America's leading photographers, American Nature represents both a political portrait of the nation during this pivotal time and an existential warning about a potentially cataclysmic future. Even though the threat of climate change is very real and affects us daily, the causes and consequences are often hard to articulate, much less represent. Mitch Epstein's monumental achievement in his overarching work of the past two decades has been to communicate the intangible networks of production and power that threaten our environment and to listen to and record the visions of people in protest, as well as the gentle thrum of the enduring forest.
American Nature features key selections from Epstein's three most recent projects: American Power (2003-9), Property Rights (2017-20) and Old Growth (2020-24). In American Power, he shows the consequences of the corporate extraction and refinement of natural resources. In Property Rights, he bears witness to local responses and resistances to such spoliations. And in Old Growth, he reveals the too rarely seen vistas of ancient trees and pristine nature, untrammeled by human exploitation. In addition to these three major photographic projects, there are two new multimedia works: the monumental installation Forest Waves, devoted to the virgin forest of Massachusetts, and Clear Cut, a compilation of still images by early 20th-century photographer Darius Kinsey on the deforestation in the American Northwest.
Mitch Epstein (born 1952) was born in Holyoke, Massachusetts, and studied under Garry Winogrand at Cooper Union. His photobook Family Business won the 2004 Kraszna-Krausz Photography Book Award. Epstein was previously a visiting artist at Bard College's Photography Program.