Mitch Epstein

(American, born 1952)

Mitch Epstein is an American photographer known for his serial works which investigate specific places. Epstein’s project American Power (2003–2007), critically documents society’s relationship to the industrial landscape. “I would say the culture of the built environment is always something that has engaged my attention,” he has explained. “My pictures are largely drawn from my experience in the real world, and wherever I go, I’m navigating the built environment.” Born in 1952 in Holyoke, MA, he studied at the Rhode Island School of Design and Cooper Union in New York. While at Cooper Union, his professor was the street photographer Garry Winogrand, whose work, along with the color photos of William Eggleston, Epstein greatly admired. In the mid-1970s, the artist finished school and began a photographic exploration of the United States. Over the following decades, he examined locations around the world, including India and Vietnam. Returning to America in the late 1990s, Epstein produced The City (1997), a project which probed the complex relationship between private and public life in New York. This was followed by the deeply personal photobook Family Business (2003), in which the artist captured the demise of his father’s furniture store and real estate business. He continues to live and work in New York, NY. Today, Epstein’s photographs are held in the collections of The Museum of Modern Art in New York, the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, among others.