Mitch Epstein turns his lense towards the familiar and seemingly banal, seeking to find beauty, myth, and mystery. The images explore the blurred line between private and public space, capturing gestures which give the photographs a life of their own.
For Recreation, Epstein photographs the rituals of American leisure in the seventies and eighties. The City reconstructs the intimate core and the anonymous skin of New York, contrasting personal images of family and friends with anonymous street vignettes. Family Business traces the decline of Holyoke, Mass., a once prosperous industrial town in New England, through the poignant example of Epstein's own family's declining fortunes and psychological disintegration.
Through these three bodies of work, Epstein examines the American Dream, both in it's reality and in it's ultimate illusiveness.