’Mitch Epstein’
Sikkema Jenkins Co., New York
16.3.2012 - 14.4.2012
Sikkema Jenkins & Co. is pleased to present an exhibition of a new series of black and white photographs by Mitch Epstein on view from March 16 through April 14, 2012.
Mitch Epstein’s new work features the idiosyncratic trees that populate New York City, underscoring the importance of trees in urban life and their complex relationship with the city’s human dwellers.
Trees have long been a leitmotiv in Epstein’s projects, especially in his series American Power (2003-2008). After five years of photographing the manifestations of energy production and consumption across the United States, Epstein decided to make pictures that reflect how he, “would like to see the world, not simply how I have inherited it.”
Epstein began this yearlong project in search of designated Great Trees, as deemed by the Parks Department in 1985. Finding these trees was less important to Epstein than the pursuit of them, which led him to discover and photograph numerous unofficial “great” trees with remarkable qualities of their own.
From Parsons Boulevard, Flushing to Sprague Avenue, Staten Island to Prospect Park, Brooklyn, Epstein returned to photograph the same trees through changing light and seasons. The resulting photographs invert people’s usual view of their city: trees no longer function as background or landscape, but, instead, become the focus of the image, dominating the human life and architecture around them.
Through his work on the series, Epstein came to appreciate how the trees’ surroundings and their relationship to the city have changed continually throughout their long lifespan. Many of these trees were planted in a different context from the urban environment that now surrounds them. Likewise, over time, the city’s own relationship to trees has shifted: citizens created community gardens in the 1970s, which were overtaken by developers and city government in the 1990s. In the last decade, New Yorkers have become increasingly protective of their trees, which will most likely outlive us to witness the city’s continued evolution. […]