Mitch Epstein has photographed the landscape and culture of America for half a century. A graduate of Cooper Union, he became a pioneer of 1970s fine-art color photography. He was inducted into the National Academy of Design in 2020, and awarded the Prix Pictet (2011), Berlin Prize (2008), and a Guggenheim Fellowship (2002). His work has been shown and collected by museums worldwide, including New York’s Museum of Modern Art, Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Whitney Museum of American Art, Los Angeles’s Getty Museum and LACMA, the National Gallery in Washington DC, The Art Institute of Chicago, the Amon Carter Museum in Fort Worth, TX, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Museum of Modern Art in Paris and London’s Tate Modern.
Current and recent exhibitions include “American Arbor” at Zander Galerie in Cologne, Germany spring 2026; “American Nature” (photographs and multi-media works) at the Gallerie d’Italia museum in Torino, Italy 2024-25; “In India” (photographs and films) at Les Rencontres d'Arles in the Abbey of Montmajour, Arles, France 2022; “Property Rights” at The Amon Carter Museum of American Art in Fort Worth, Texas 2020-21.
Epstein’s mixed media work is comprised of films, moving image-sound works, and performance. In 2024, he made Forest Waves, a multi-channel video-sound installation with tonal music by Mike Tamburo and Samer Ghadry, filmed performing in the forest; also in 2024, Darius Kinsey: Clear Cut, a looped projection with music by David Lang, performed by Maya Beiser. In 2013, The Walker Art Center commissioned and premiered a theatrical rendition of Epstein’s American Power series. Directed by Annie B. Parsons and Paul Lazar, the performance combines music by Erik Friedlander with Epstein’s live storytelling, video, projected photographs, and archival material. In film, Epstein has worked as director of the documentary films Dad and Retail (2003); director of photography for India Cabaret (1988); and production designer and co-producer for the feature films Mississippi Masala (1991) and Salaam Bombay! (1988).
Among his seventeen books, most of them published by Steidl Verlag, are Recreation (2022, 2005), Property Rights (2021), New York Arbor (2013), American Power (2009), and Family Business (2004), winner of the Kraszna-Krausz Photography Book Award.
Epstein lives in New York City and Massachusetts.
Full CV here.