The promise and pathology of America in the photographs of Epstein, more than half of which are previously unpublished
A New York Times Book Review 2019 holiday gift guide pick
America, as a place and an idea, has occupied Mitch Epstein’s art for the past five decades. With the first photographs he made in 1969 at the age of 16, Epstein began confronting the cultural psychology of the United States. Although he started working in an era defined by the Vietnam War, civil rights, rock and roll, and free love, he responded hardily to each radically different era that followed―from Reaganomics to surveillance after 9/11, to the current climate crisis and resurgence of white supremacy. More than a single era or issue, it is the living organism of American culture that engages Epstein; no matter how much the country changes, he describes something mysteriously and persistently American.
Conceived of and sequenced by Andrew Roth, Sunshine Hotel assembles 175 photos made between 1969 and 2018―more than half of them previously unpublished. Yet the book is not simply a retrospective. It traces both the evolution of an artist and the development of a country, revealing Epstein’s formal and thematic shifts in tandem with America’s changing zeitgeist and landscape. Sunshine Hotel is a visual immersion that forgoes linearity and a classical layout, as it sets forth Epstein’s evolving understanding of his country’s pathologies and promise.
A pioneer of 1970s color photography, Mitch Epstein (born 1952) has won numerous awards including the Prix Pictet, the Berlin Prize and a Guggenheim Fellowship. His work is held in collections including the Museum of Modern Art and Tate Modern, and in 2013 the Walker Art Center commissioned a theatrical rendition of his American Power series. His Steidl books include Family Business (2003), Recreation (2005), American Power (2011), New York Arbor (2013) and Rocks and Clouds (2017).
Arranged out of chronological order by the editor Andrew Roth, the photos portray an artist with abiding curiosity, able to see both the personal and the political. (Hilary Moss New York Times: T Magazine)
Sunshine Hotel, is a linear exploration of past and present reality, told through a visual narrative of the United States. Through his artistic craft, Epstein’s work spans across the cultural, environmental, political, and social shifts of the nation, offering a detailed visual recounting of events, people, and places. As a pioneer of color photography, Epstein’s cumulative work offers detailed insight into the complexities of America: the place, its ideas, and its people. (Rachel Cheung Document Journal)
Epstein’s study, aided by his large-format camera, combines topographic and social realism with picturesque conventions in ways that analogize the relationship between close observation and distant speculation, between the specificities of local realities and the abstractions of politics. (Drew Sawyer Document Journal)
[Sunshine Hotel] threads recent photographs ... into an anachronistic sequence that heightens the connections between new and archival photographs. (Rebecca Bengal Aperture)
