MITCH EPSTEIN New York Trees, Rocks & Clouds€¦ · MITCH EPSTEIN New York Trees, Rocks & Clouds PRESS RELEASE Exhibition from March 17th to May 6th, 2017 Opening on Thursday, March

Galerie Les filles du calvaire - Mitch Epstein17 rue des filles du calvaire, 75003 Paris • contact : [email protected] • +33 (0)1 42 74 47 05

MITCH EPSTEINNew York Trees, Rocks & Clouds

PRESS RELEASE

Exhibition from March 17th to May 6th, 2017Opening on Thursday, March 16th, 2017

Month of Photography - April 2017

Mitch Epstein is among the most renowned American photographers of his generation. Five years after his American Power exhibition at the Fondation Cartier Bresson, he returns to Paris at the Galerie Les Filles du calvaire with New York Trees, Rocks & Clouds, a major trilogy showcased for the first time in France.

For more than four decades, and across the United States, Europe, India and Vietnam, Mitch Epstein has been photographing humankind’s relationship to nature, each other, and modern life. His Recreation series began in the 70’s as an observation of American culture and its landscapes. With no didacticism or judgment, Epstein photographically explored how Americans spent their free time. He expanded these various themes in The City (1995-98), a series which explores the close relationship

between public and private space; and in Family Business (2000-02), where he shed light on the complex reality of the American dream with a multiple-genre work that described the closure of his father’s business and demise of his hometown. The book Family Business, which combined still images, film, archival material, interviews, and the artist’s own writing, was seminal. Five years later, Epstein’s acclaimed project American Power (2003-08) was awarded the Prix Pictet; Epstein traveled to twenty-five states to photograph the impact of energy production on the American culture and landscape.Rare among his photographic peers, Epstein has developed a political yet never moralistic or simplistic point of view through questioning symbols of “Americanness” and observing the impact of the economy on society and the environment. He approached other countries with the same kind of questioning. In India, where he lived and made movies1 with his first wife in the 80’s, he made photographs free of exoticism, inspired by his daily life. The images he made in Vietnam (1993-95), are gathered into a beautiful monograph2 that offers insight into the cultural shift from traditionalism to modernity. Epstein’s visual tracking of the old within the new gives his work remarkable consistency.

MITCH EPSTEINNew York Trees, Rocks & Clouds Exhibition from March 17th to May 6th, 2017Opening on Thursday, March 16th, 2017 (6 p.m to 9p.m)

CONVERSATION WITH MICHEL GUERRIN SATURDAY, MARCH 18th (3 p.m)

17, rue des Filles-du-Calvaire 75003 Paris • 01 42 74 47 05 • www.fillesducalvaire.com

American Elm, Eastern Parkway, Brooklyn, 2012

1 Salaam Bombay! , Mississippi Masala 2 Vietnam, a book of changes, W. W. Norton & Company, 1996

With these last three series exhibited at the gallery, Mitch Epstein shifts his interest toward new motifs and photographic techniques. Employing an 8X10 camera, black and white film, and mural size prints, Epstein applies a unique approach to landscape: his pictures do not isolate nature but investigate it in juxtaposition to urban life. Indeed, when Epstein captures a whirling sky above glass and concrete, or a tortuous tree in the middle of a city, what he questions is humankind’s attempt to conquer or cohabitate with nature.

In the 70s, more than a century after the creation of Central Park by landscape designer Frederick Law Olmsted, American artist Robert Smithson3 focused on the confrontation of the urban and the natural, in which he saw the possibility of “earth sculptures”. By inviting us to imagine “Central Park a million years ago”, he emphasized how “the notion of park as a static

entity – a ground work of necessity and chance – is questioned by the camera’s eye”. The tension between chance and necessity, nature and city intrigued Epstein. Yet his complex pictures transcend the simple opposition between the natural world and civilization. Beyond Central Park, the city of New York, with all its boroughs, becomes the site of Epstein’s mapping project, which revolves around the three motifs of trees, rocks and clouds. The distillation that comes from black and white (new in his work), as well as the infinite scale of greys, accentuates the formal impact of Epstein’s subjects.


East 172nd Street, Bronx, 2014

My rocks and clouds, like my trees in New York Arbor, exist (photographically) in relation to human enterprise. I’m not a nature photographer. It’s the inextricability of human society and nature that interests me.

“

3 Frederick Law. Olmsted and the Dialectical Landscape, Robert Smithson, 1973.


By omitting the city’s cacophonous colors, Mitch Epstein directs our eyes toward the essential. He draws the lyrical out of the documentary. His is a contemplative approach where different temporalities intertwine within the same image. The New York Arbor series, conducted between 2011 and 2012, offers a gallery of portraits of the city’s trees. These silent guardians, often several hundred years old yet forgotten, are the first witnesses of urban expansion and the successive generations that furthered it. Here, the endless and patient geological time scale reminds men how recent they are.

With his last series entitled Rocks and Clouds (2014- 2015), the artist continues his New York research by

photographing rocks and emphasizing their sculptural qualities: the same that Olmsted admired a century ago.

Epstein’s photographs describe the unpredictable and ephemeral nature of clouds. He focuses on the moving sky and confronts modern architecture at the same time. In sum, this trilogy constitutes an extraordinary exploration of the New York landscape, where nature, technology, and humankind converge.

Exhibition shown during the Month of Photography (Grand Paris) - April 2017

Sébastien Borderie

Clouds #89, New York City, 2015

I chose clouds as an opposite to rocks. I thought about ancient time versus contemporary time.”“

Clouds #94, New York City, 2015


Marion Avenue, Bronx, 2015


Weeping Beech, Woodlawn Cemetery, Bronx, 2012


MITCH EPSTEINBorn in 1952 in Holyoke, Massachusetts, USAHe lives and works in New York

EDUCATION

1972-74 The Cooper Union, New York, USA1972-74 Rhode Island School of Design, USA1970-71 Union College, New York, USA

SELECTED GRANTS/AWARDS

2010 Winner, Prix Pictet Photography Prize: Growth2009 Gold Medal Deutscher Fotobuchpreis, American Power Open Society Institute Documentary Photography Project Grant2008 The American Academy in Berlin: Berlin Prize in Arts and Letters, Guna S. Mundheim Fellow in the Visual Arts, spring 2004 Kraszna-Krausz Photography Book Award, Family Business2002 John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship 1996 Camera Works, Inc. Artist Grant 1997 American Institute of Graphic Artists, 50 Best Books of the Year 1994 Pinewood Foundation Artist Grant 1980 New York State Council for the Arts Artist Fellowship 1978 National Endowment for the Arts, Individual Artist Grant

SOLO EXHIBITIONS

2017 Gallery Thomas Zander, Köln, Germany New York Trees, Rocks & Clouds, Galerie Les filles du calvaire, Paris2016 Yancey Richardson Gallery, New York, USA2013 The A Foundation, Brussels, Brussels, Belgique2012 Galerie Thomas Zander, Cologne, Allemagne Sikkema Jenkins & Co., New York, USA2011 Musée de l’Élysée, Lausanne, Suisse Open Eye Gallery, Liverpool, UK Fondation Henri Cartier Bresson, Paris, France2010 KunstMuseum, Bonn, Allemagne2008 Brancolini Grimaldi, Rome, Italie2007 FOAM – Fotografiemuseum, Amsterdam, Pays-Bas Sikkema Jenkins & Co., New York, NY, USA Galerie Thomas Zander, Köln, Allemagne2006 Jackson Fine Art, Atlanta, GA, USA2005 Sikkema Jenkins & Co., New York, NY, USA2004 Yancey Richardson, New York, USA

PhotoEspana, Madrid, Spain BrancoliniGrimaldi, Florence, Italy, Jackson Fine Art, Atlanta, GA, USA2003 Power House, Memphis, Tennessee, USA2002 Onefront Gallery, New York, NY, USA1996 Rose Gallery, Santa Monica, CA, USA2001 Brent Sikkema, New York, NY, USA1998 Center for Documentary Studies, Durham, NC, USA Springfield Museum of Fine Arts, MA, USA1996 Wooster Gardens, New York, NY, USA Gallery of Contemporary Photography, LA, USA1994 Cleveland Museum of Art, OH, USA1992 Tenri Gallery, New York, NY, USA1991 Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge, MA, USA1989 Santa Barbara Museum of Art, CA, USA1988 Aperture, Burden Gallery, New York, USA1984 H.F. Manes Gallery, New York, USA1981-1982 Light Gallery, New York, NY Light Gallery, New York, USA1979 Light Gallery, New York, USA

GROUP EXHIBITIONS (selection)

2016 Telling Tales: Contemporary Narrative Photography, McNay Art Museum, San Antonio, USA Summer Exhibition 2016, Royal Academy of Arts, London, UK LUX: The Radiant Sea , Yancey Richardson Gallery, New York, USA2015 Celebrating Photography at the National Gallery of Art: Recent Gifts The National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C, USA Museum of Stones, The Noguchi Museum, Queens, NY Pair(s), Maison Particulière Art Center, Brussels 2014 Une photographie sous tension, La collection de Florence et Damien Bachelot, Musée Nicéphore Niepce, Chalon sur Saône2015 Eyes Wide Open! 100 Years of Leica Photography, House of Photography, Deichtorhallen Hamburg, Germany 2014 Prix Pictet: A Retrospective at Les Rencontres d’Arles, France2013 Color! American Photography Transformed. Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth, USA Aichi Triennale, Nagoya, Japan Le radici dello sguardo, Il Filatoio di Caraglio, Italy A Democracy of Images, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington D.C. USA FLAG Art Foundation, New York, “Something About A Tree Museum of Modern Art/PS1 Queens, “EXPO 1: New York,” Somerset House, “Landmark: The Fields of Photography,” Amon Carter Museum of American Art, “Big Pictures,” Une affaire de famille, Musée de la Photographie à Charleroi, Belgium2012 Out of Focus: Photography at Saatchi Gallery, Saatchi Gallery, London

2011 The Unseen Eye: Photographs from the W.M. Hunt Collection, George Eastman House, Rochester, USA The Altered Landscape: Photographs of a Changing Environment, Nevada Museum of Art, USA Infinite Balance: Artists and the Environment, Museum of Photographic Arts, San Diego, USA Hyper Real: Art and America Around 1970, Ludwig Forum, Aachen, Germany New Documentary Forms, Tate Modern, London, UK Appropriated Landscapes, The Walther Collection, Ulm, Germany

PUBLICATIONS

Rocks and Clouds, Steidl, 2017New York Arbor, Steidl, 2013Berlin, Mitch Epstein, Steidl & The American Academy in berlin, 2011Mitch Epstein. State of the union, Hatje Cantz , 2010American Power, Mitch Epstein, Steidl, 2009Mitch Epstein: work, Mitch Epstein, Steidl, Germany, 2007Fraternity, text by Siddhartha Deb inspired by photographs by Mitch Epstein, 2006Recreation: American Photographs 1973-1988, Mitch Epstein, Steidl, 2005Family Business, Mitch Epstein, Steidl, 2003The City, Mitch Epstein, Powerhouse, New York, 2001Vietnam: a book of changes, Mitch Epstein, W.W. Norton/Doubletake, N.Y, 1996Fire Water Wind: photographs from Tenri, Mitch Epstein, Doyusha, Japan 1995In pursuit of India, Mitch Epstein, Aperture, New York, 1987

ENSEIGNEMENTS

2004 School of Visual Arts, Graduate Photography Program, Visiting Lecturer 1997-2001 Bard College, School of the Arts, Assoc. Professor of Photography 1998-2002 School of Visual Arts, Graduate Student Advisor 1998, 20021999 Lacoste School of the Arts, Professor of Photography 19991977 Harvard University, Instructor of Photography 1977

FILMOGRAPHY

2003 Dad, Producer and Director, Short 1992 Mississippi Masala, Production Designer and Cinematographer Feature1988 Salaam Bombay!, Production Designer and Cinematographer. Feature 1985 India Cabaret, Director of Photography. Documentary 1982 So Far From India, Director of Photography. Documentary

SELECTED COLLECTIONS

Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NYMuseum of Modern Art, New York, NYWhitney Museum of American Art, New York, NYTate Modern, London, UKNational Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.International Center of Photography, New York, NYJ. Paul Getty Museum at the Getty Center, Los Angeles, CALos Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CASan Francisco Museum of Modern Art, CAThe Victoria and Albert Museum, London, UKFondation Henri Cartier-Bresson, Paris, FranceArt Institute of Chicago, ILMuseum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago, ILPhiladelphia Museum of Art, PAMuseum of Fine Arts, Houston, TXMuseum of Fine Arts, Boston, MAAmon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, TXSmithsionian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore, MDNew Orleans Museum of Art, LABibliotheque Nationale, Paris, FranceTokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, JapanMuseum of Contemporary Art, Mexico City, MexicoAustralian National Gallery, Canberra, AustraliaBrooklyn Museum of Art, Brooklyn, NYNevada Museum of Art, Reno, NVSanta Barbara Museum of Art, Santa Barbara, CAColby College Museum of Art, Waterville, MESt. Louis Museum of Art, St Louis, MOThe Walther Collection, Ulm, GermanyDeutsche Börse Group, Frankfurt, GermanyVassar College Art Museum, Poughkeepsie, NYGilman Paper Collection, New York, NYLaSalle Bank Photography Collection, Chicago, ILMuseum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago, ILNelson Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MOEquitable Life Assurance Society, NYHenry Art Gallery, University of Washington, Seattle, WAChase Manhattan Art Program, New York, NYCitibank, New York, NYMorgan Guaranty, New York, NYGoldman Sachs, New York, NY


Documents

MITCH EPSTEIN New York Trees, Rocks & Clouds€¦ · MITCH EPSTEIN New York Trees, Rocks & Clouds PRESS RELEASE Exhibition from March 17th to May 6th, 2017 Opening on Thursday, March