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137 Reserve Club

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Mitch Epstein

Recreation

Mitch Epstein

Mitch Epstein. Vietnam Veteran’s Parade, New York City, 1973

I think remarkable photography insists upon a critical reading of a well-made picture’s layers, its conceptual tension, its historical depth. Mitch Epstein

There are few ideas more central to American mythos, and to the traditions of American photography itself, than the great American road trip. Throughout his 50-year career, the photographer Mitch Epstein has ventured throughout the country seeking the nexus points that define American identity in all its strange and unexpected contradictions.

Photographed throughout the 70s and 80s, Epstein’s Recreation surveys the rituals of pleasure and undercurrent of alienation that defined late twentieth-century America. The breadth of places and subjects Epstein explored take the form of a visual epic that spans from coast to coast and across social and cultural divides. Throughout the series, the photographer’s voice intersperses joy with curiosity, sorrow with earnestness, and casts stylistic and emotional nets widely to capture the endless span of late century American identity. Epstein began Recreation at a time when color photography had barely begun to become accepted within the historical photographic canon. Along with his contemporaries in Stephen Shore, Joel Sternfeld, Joel Meyerowitz, and William Eggleston, Epstein helped to define a new photo-literative tradition while engaging in the impossible task of defining what it means to be American.

The title Recreation itself is a testament to Post-War American affluence that saturates the frames of Epstein’s pictures. When touring the work we encounter moments of mundane serenity, but also the debaucheries of nightlife, antics of American youth, and the enriched banalities of family life. What we see in Epstein’s pictures are time capsules of a particular era of American capitalist excess, a cultural snapshot of the last vestiges of pre-techno-dominant lifestyles, and an ode to the attitudes of American exceptionalism that proudly pronounce, “we just do what we want.”

Selected Works

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Mitch Epstein

New York City, 1983

3.5 ETH

Mitch Epstein

Museum of Modern Art, New York City, 1974

3.5 ETH

Mitch Epstein

Tonawanda, New York, 1974

3.5 ETH

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On SuperRare

Mitch Epstein

Martha’s Vineyard Airport, 1983

3.5 ETH

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On SuperRare

Mitch Epstein

Mountain Park, Holyoke, Massachusetts, 1973

3.5 ETH

Mitch Epstein

White Sands, New Mexico, 1992

3.5 ETH

Full Collection

The 137 Reserve Club is an invite-only group of collectors with first access to work from the world’s most iconic photographers. Sign Up to access the full inventory from this collection.

Artist

Mitch Epstein

1952 (USA)

Mitch Epstein is a photographer who helped pioneer fine-art color photography in the 1970s. His photographs are in numerous major museum collections, including New York’s Museum of Modern Art, Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Whitney Museum of American Art; The J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; and the Tate Modern in London.

In 2022, he exhibited his photographs and films (Salaam Bombay! and India Cabaret) at Les Rencontres d’Arles in the 12th century Abbey of Montmajour, Arles, France. In 2020-21, he had an exhibition of his series Property Rights at the Amon Carter Museum of American Art in Fort Worth, Texas; it was also exhibited at Sikkema Jenkins & Co., New York and Galerie Thomas Zander, Cologne (2019). Other solo exhibitions include the Multimedia Art Museum, Moscow (2020), Museum Helmond, Netherlands (2019), Andreas Murkudis, Berlin; Yancey Richardson Gallery, New York; Galerie Les Filles du Calvaire, Paris (2016-17); Fondation A Stichting, Brussels (2013).

In 2013, the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis commissioned and premiered a theatrical rendition of Epstein’s series American Power. Directed by Annie B Parsons and Paul Lazar, the American Power performance combined original live music by Erik Friedlander and storytelling by Epstein, along with video and projected photographs and archival material. Epstein and Friedlander performed the show at the Wexner Center for the Arts, Ohio (2014) and Victoria and Albert Museum, London (2015).

Epstein’s seventeen books include Silver + Chrome (Steidl 2022); Recreation (Steidl 2022); Property Rights (Steidl, 2021); In India (Steidl, 2021); Sunshine Hotel (Steidl/PPP Editions, 2019); Rocks and Clouds (Steidl 2017); New York Arbor (Steidl 2013); Berlin (Steidl/The American Academy in Berlin 2011); American Power (Steidl 2009); Family Business (Steidl 2003), winner of the 2004 Kraszna-Krausz Photography Book Award.

In 2020, Mitch Epstein was inducted into the National Academy of Design. In 2011, he won the Prix Pictet for American Power. Among his other awards are the Berlin Prize in Arts and Letters from the American Academy in Berlin (2008), and a Guggenheim Fellowship (2003).

Epstein has worked as a director, cinematographer, and production designer on several films, including Dad, Mississippi Masala, and Salaam Bombay!. He lives with his family in New York City.

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