"Mitch Epstein. American Nature" exhibition in Turin

Gallerie d'Italia – Turin will be presenting MITCH EPSTEIN. AMERICAN NATURE, the most important retrospective on the famous American photographer Mitch Epstein, open to public from 17 October 2024 to 2 March 2025.

The exhibition, curated by Brian Wallis (CPW - Center for Photography at Woodstock), brings together for the first time the most significant photographic series of the last twenty years by Mitch Epstein, in which he explores the conflicts between American society and the wilderness within the context of global climate change: American Power, Property Rights, and Old Growth.

In American Power the artist focuses on how nations and private interests exploit nature, documenting the impact of energy production and consumption on the landscape and the people of the United States. From 2003 to 2008, Epstein travelled the country to photograph fossil fuel and nuclear power production sites and the communities that live alongside them.

In the photographic series Property Rights, Mitch Epstein questions to whom the land belongs and who has the right to exploit or plunder its resources. These photographs investigate the complex dynamics of land ownership in a country founded on colonial expansion and industrial development. Epstein began the Property Rights series in the Standing Rock Sioux reservation in 2017. His conversations and portrait sessions with Native Elders inspired him to seek out other land conflicts in which ordinary people had created extraordinary movements to defend the land from government and corporate takeovers.

Epstein's latest work, Old Growth - of which a part commissioned by Intesa Sanpaolo is presented for the first time - celebrates the ancient forests that have survived in remote regions of the United States. Almost all of America's ancient forests, about 95%, have in fact been destroyed in the last century. Epstein decided to photograph individual trees and interdependent biosystems that have survived for centuries, and many of which for millennia.

His large-format photographs immerse visitors in a primordial wilderness untouched by humans, celebrating the majesty and resilience of these ancient living kingdoms and highlighting what humanity risks losing due to the climate crisis.

In addition to these three series of photographs, the immersive room of the Gallerie d'Italia - Turin will be hosting the première of Mitch Epstein's original Forest Waves project, a video and sound installation created across four seasons in the Berkshires forests.  The video of the forests that will surround visitors is accompanied by a hypnotic soundtrack by musicians Mike Tamburo and Samer Ghadry, recorded in the same forests. 

The Arena of Gallerie d'Italia - Turin will also be showing Epstein's short film Darius Kinsey: Clear Cut, a visually compelling collection of stills by early 20th century photographer Darius Kinsey (1859-1945) showing heroic loggers posing next to huge felled trees in the American Northwest. The projection is set to music written by David Lang and performed by cellist and singer Maya Beiser.  Together, these two installations are a tribute to the American wilderness, an ode to what remains and an elegy for what has been destroyed. 

The exhibition catalogue, produced by Edizioni Gallerie d'Italia | Skira in Italian and English, features essays by the curator and art historians Robert Slifkin and Makeda Djata Best, as well as an interview with Epstein. 

Mitch Epstein 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; the Tate Modern in London.

His Indian photographs and films (Salaam Bombay! and India Cabaret) were exhibited at Les Rencontres d'Arles (2022) in the 12th century Abbey of Montmajour, Arles, France. The Amon Carter Museum of American Art in Fort Worth, Texas exhibited his series Property Rights (2020-21), which was also shown at Sikkema Jenkins & Co., New York (2019) and Galerie Thomas Zander, Cologne (2019). A survey of Epstein’s work was shown at the Multimedia Art Museum, Moscow (2020).

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 live 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, most published by Steidl Verlag, include Recreation (2022); Property Rights (2021); In India (2021); Rocks and Clouds (2017); New York Arbor (2013); Berlin (Steidl/The American Academy in Berlin 2011); American Power (2009); Family Business (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 Forest Waves, Dad, Mississippi Masala, and Salaam Bombay!. He lives with his family in New York City.