MITCH EPSTEIN – ROCKS AND CLOUDS
2016-10-17As with his acclaimed tree portraits (New York Arbor), these large-format black and white pictures were made in the five boroughs of New York City, and deepen Epsteinʼs investigation of how nature and society interact. Epstein is less interested in wilderness than in how the natural world exists in an urban landscape, where architecture is, at its most elemental, made of rock. These pictures evoke the human aspiration, and inability to harness time and nature. Epstein uses his signature technique of pictorial layering, and with Rocks and Clouds he further refines his convergence of the conceptual and documentary. A pioneer of fine art color photography in the 1970s, Epstein employs his formal mastery to describe the cityʼs sky and bedrock, as both sculptural and potent. The mirroring of rocks and clouds and the synthesis of whatʼs above and below the horizon have intrigued ancient Chinese painters, as well as modern earthwork artists such as Robert Smithson,
both of whom were inspirations for this series. Made with an 8×10 field camera, Rocks and Clouds salutes slow photography in a digital culture. In this way, the subject of time informs the workʼs content and its methodology. When it seems impossible to make a fresh picture of New York, Epstein surprises us with an unfamiliar view of it.
Opposite – Clouds #33, New York City, 2014
Exhibition runs through to October 22nd, 2016
Yancey Richardson Gallery
525 West 22nd Street
New York
NY 10011
