MITCH EPSTEIN
2012-03-12Mitch Epstein’s new work features the idiosyncratic trees that populate New York City, underscoring the importance of trees in urban life and their complex relationship with the city’s human dwellers.
Trees have long been a leitmotiv in Epstein’s projects, especially in his series American Power (2003-2008). After five years of photographing the manifestations of energy production and consumption across the United States, Epstein decided to make pictures that reflect how he, “would like to see the world, not simply how I have inherited it.”
Epstein began this yearlong project in search of designated Great Trees, as deemed by the Parks Department in 1985. Finding these trees was less important to Epstein than the pursuit of them, which led him to discover and photograph numerous unofficial “great” trees with remarkable qualities of their own.
From Parsons Boulevard, Flushing to Sprague Avenue, Staten Island to Prospect Park, Brooklyn, Epstein returned to photograph the same trees through changing light and seasons. The resulting photographs invert people’s usual view of their city: trees no longer function as background or landscape, but, instead, become the focus of the image, dominating the human life and architecture around them.
Opposite – White Oak, Raoul Wallenberg Forest, Bronx 2011
Exhibition runs through to April 14th, 2012
Sikkema Jenkins & Co
530 West 22nd Street
New York
NY
10011
