Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611

  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Mitch Epstein: American Power

Mitch Epstein: American Power

Epstein, Mitch
Epstein, Mitch

Hardcover

General PhotographyPhotographers

Currently unavailable to order

ISBN10: 3865219241
ISBN13: 9783865219244
Publisher: Steidl
Published: Oct 31 2009
Pages: 144
Weight: 3.40
Height: 0.90 Width: 11.80 Depth: 10.50
Language: English

Mitch Epstein's investigation into who and what powers America

Mitch Epstein's latest project tackles one of the most loaded issues on the nation's agenda: what and who powers America? Between 2003 and 2008, prompted by the evacuation of an environmentally contaminated Ohio town, Epstein traveled the United States to document the country's energy hot spots, where fossil fuel, nuclear, hydroelectric, wind and solar power are produced, encountering further contaminations, Homeland Security obstacles, corporate invincibility and the occasional token of hope. In a post-Katrina and post-Patriot Act America, the angle of engagement permitted Epstein often varied, so that many of the power plants and refineries were shot from an enforced distance (If you were Muslim, you'd be cuffed and taken in for questioning, he quotes an F.B.I. agent in West Virginia telling him). Alongside these classic depictions of looming, obdurate power, Epstein includes more idiomatic images--a woman wading in the water above Niagara Falls, father and son motorcross bikers, a tree cluttered with debris--which bring the issues back down to human scale. Epstein tells in an accompanying essay how these experiences deepened his political convictions, and led him to think harder about the artist's role in a country teetering between collapse and transformation. Here is his portrait of early twenty-first-century America, as it clings to past comforts and gropes for a more sensible and sustainable future.

Mitch Epstein has scrutinized the physical and psychic landscapes of America since the early 1970s. With the Recreation and Family Business projects, Epstein established himself as an artist who, in his own words, seeks to engage with the complexity of our cultural state of things, rather than reduce it to visual sloganeering.

Also in

General Photography

View All