PHOTO: Mitch Epstein-Old Grouth

Mitch Epstein’s photographs offer a subtle and contemplative approach to a range of critical societal issues within the United States, continuously questioning what it means to be American. From his early pioneering color photographs of American life in the seventies and eighties, to his most recent series focusing on the confluence of nature and human society in New York, Epstein has consistently created formally complex images that result from a highly introspective approach to photography.

By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: Gallerie d’Italia Archive

Mitch Epstein presents a major multi-media exhibition of his project “Old Grouth”, that brings together for the first time the most significant photographic series of the last twenty years by the artist, in which he explores the conflicts between American society and the wilderness within the context of global climate change: “American Power”, “Property Rights”, and “Old Growth”. From 2017–2024, Epstein traveled across America, photographing some of the country’s most ancient trees, among them bigleaf maples, eastern white pines, moss-covered cedars, sequoias, bristlecone pines, and bald cypresses. Old growth forests are crucial for human survival in our fight against climate change, as they hold significantly more carbon than replanted saplings. Yet humans have destroyed more than 95 percent of America’s irreplaceable original forests. Using a large format camera to describe the exquisite details of our arboreal ancestors, Epstein brings the forest to the gallery, creating an immersive environment that enables the viewer to absorb the sculptural beauty of trees and the multiple dimensions of biosystems that have flourished in the wild for centuries or millennia. These photographs evoke an other-worldly mystery. In the one photograph that contains a human figure, “Congress Trail, Sequoia National Park, California, 2021”, we gain some sense of the epic proportions of these life-giving trees. This series is also an inquiry into the concept of time. “Old Growth| underscores the tension between the medium of photography – the camera can record its subject in a split-second – and the forests depicted, which have potentially infinite lifespans. This oscillation between the instant and the ancient, between human mortality and cosmic perpetuity, resonates through the exhibition. “Old Growth” articulates the forest’s resilience and fragility, highlighting the need for us to act now to realign our relationship to these precious natural resources. “It is not about how we can save trees,” says Epstein, borrowing from ecologist Suzanne Simard; “It is about how the trees might save us”. In “American Power” the artist focuses on how nations and private interests exploit nature, documenting the impact of energy production and consumption on the landscape and the people of the United States. From 2003 to 2008, Epstein travelled the country to photograph fossil fuel and nuclear power production sites and the communities that live alongside them. In the photographic series “Property Rights”, Mitch Epstein questions to whom the land belongs and who has the right to exploit or plunder its resources. These photographs investigate the complex dynamics of land ownership in a country founded on colonial expansion and industrial development. Epstein began the “Property Rights” series in the Standing Rock Sioux reservation in 2017. His conversations and portrait sessions with Native Elders inspired him to seek out other land conflicts in which ordinary people had created extraordinary movements to defend the land from government and corporate takeovers. In addition to these three series of photographs, the exhibition hosts the première of Mitch Epstein’s original “Forest Waves” project, a video and sound installation created across four seasons in the Berkshires forests.  The video of the forests that surrounds the visitors is accompanied by a hypnotic soundtrack by musicians Mike Tamburo and Samer Ghadry, recorded in the same forests.  Also, is shown Epstein’s short film “Darius Kinsey: Clear Cut”, a visually compelling collection of stills by early 20th century photographer Darius Kinsey (1859-1945) showing heroic loggers posing next to huge felled trees in the American Northwest. The projection is set to music written by David Lang and performed by cellist and singer Maya Beiser.  Together, these two installations are a tribute to the American wilderness, an ode to what remains and an elegy for what has been destroyed.

Photo: Mitch Epstein, Amos Coal Power Plant, Raymond, West Virginia 2004, © Mitch Epstein

Info: Info: Curator: Brian Wallis, Gallerie d’Italia – Torino, Piazza San Carlo 156, Turin, Italy, Duration: 17/10/2024-2/3/2025, Days & Hours: Tue & Thu-Sun 9:30-19:30, Wed 9:30-22:30, https://gallerieditalia.com/