Mitch Epstein: Something to Honour
Photographer Mitch Epstein’s latest series features the idiosyncratic trees that inhabit New York City – a tribute to architecture that shares the city’s landscape. The photographic collection, ‘New York Arbor,’ is presented in full in a book.
Rooted in New York’s sidewalks, parks, and cemeteries, some trees grow wild, some are contortionists adapting to constrictive surroundings, while others are pruned into prize specimens. Turning the pages of ‘New York Arbor,’ Epstein presents the trees of New York as intricate beauties, avoiding the consumption of the surrounding urban landscape.
From 2011 to 2012, Epstein explored New York’s five boroughs in search of remarkable trees, often returning to photograph the same trees through the changing seasons and light. The project saw Epstein work in black and white, a change from colour, which has been his almost exclusive choice for the past 40 years.
The cumulative effect of these photographs is to invert people’s usual view of their city: trees no longer function as background, but instead dominate the human life and architecture around them. For three decades, trees were a reoccurring theme in Epstein’s work. After photographing energy production and consumption for his project American Power, Epstein decided to make trees his primary focus. He wanted to photograph, “something to honor, rather than mourn.”
‘New York Arbor’ is a cloth bound edition housed in a uniquely designed slipcase. Available from Steidl Publishers: www.steidlville.com
