The Brooklyn Rail

Old Growth, Mitch Epstein’s new exhibition at Yancey Richardson, showcases the artist’s recent photographs of very old trees. (Old growth refers to trees or forests which have grown undisturbed for long periods of time.) Eight of the nine photographs were made within the last three years with one photograph, Maple Glade, Hoh Rain Forest, Olympic National Park, Washington, from 2017. In Richardson’s side gallery, a video and sound installation, Forest Waves (2024), plays continuously on a loop. The footage chronicles seasonal change, from spring to winter, in the Berkshires. An ambient sonic score, by Mike Tamburo and Samer Ghadry, accompanies the video.

In his early photographs, Epstein recorded interactions of people and their environments, using a small, handheld film camera. In the 1990s he began working with larger format view cameras, which led him to gradually shift to research-based work. The resulting photographs, many quite large, revolve around environmental issues and have been presented over the past fifteen years in a sequence of exhibitions and books: American Power (2009), Berlin (2011), New York Arbor (2013), Rocks and Clouds (2017), Property Rights (2021), and now Old Growth (2024).

In Old Growth, Epstein steps back from the political turbulence of American Power and Property Rights to look at the natural world. Although one photograph contains a human figure, Old Growth ultimately visualizes a scale and temporality outside of human understanding.

Old Growth takes some of its formal cues from New York Arbor, a black-and-white project in which Epstein photographed trees in New York City. After selecting his specimens, Epstein timed his location shoots with particular attention to weather conditions. Most of the trees in the book appear to have been photographed under what photographers call “cloudy bright” conditions. This type of illumination, where sunlight barely penetrates the clouds, creates illumination that is beautiful, low contrast, and almost shadowless. The light in Old Growth seems similarly modulated by Epstein’s close attention to weather, cloud cover, and time of day.

The 8x10 film camera that Epstein uses for Old Growth is a heavy, bulky instrument that must always be mounted on a tripod. Because the lenses for the camera create a shallow area of focus, almost all large format photographers use small lens apertures and long exposures. Paradoxically, the restrictions imposed by the heavy tripod and long exposure time offer the photographer a freedom unavailable to those working with a handheld camera: the large format camera allows for precise framing and incredibly detailed negatives.

Camera height can also be explored by astute large format photographers as yet another creative variable. For his New York photographs, Epstein lifted his camera up high to peer over car roofs and interfering fences. In Old Growth, his high camera position gives his photographs an uncanny, weightless look. In Sequoia National Park, California (2022) the viewer floats impossibly high above a grove of sequoias as snow from a sudden storm rakes across the image. (The blurred snow indicates a long exposure.) From Epstein’s Instagram account, I know that in his haunting Sitka Spruce (Tree of Life), Olympic National Park, Washington (2021) he used a high camera position to clear the tidal mud in the foreground of the gnarled Tree of Life.

Because the 8x10 camera is so cumbersome, the photographer must plan and previsualize the shoot carefully, considering time of day and weather to anticipate their ideal lighting conditions. Epstein usually prefers cool, semi-shady light to illuminate his subjects. We can see this in Coastal Redwood (Boy Scout Tree), Jedediah Smith Redwoods State Park, California (2022), Congress Trail, Sequoia National Park, California (2021) and two remarkable bristlecone pine images.

In the lede image of the show, Ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest, California (2022), Epstein demonstrates his sensitivity to natural light. This photograph appears to have been made a few moments before sunrise. I imagine that Epstein and his assistant positioned the camera and tripod in predawn darkness and waited for the exact instant—just before sunrise—that would produce the icy, shadowless light that illuminates the eccentric bark and curling limbs of this singular Pinus Balfourianaet in its high-altitude habitat. Like its later companion, my favorite bristlecone photograph, Patriarch Grove, Ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest, California (2021), was made at dawn. Unlike the 2022 work, Epstein cropped the top of the tree to guide the viewer’s attention toward the pine’s expressive, spiraling limbs. A close look at the bark reveals the fire damage this ancient pine has endured over the millennia.

Patriarch Grove recalls Edward Weston’s 1930s photographs of similar high-altitude pines in the Sierra Nevada. (Weston also worked with 8x10 inch view camera and wasn’t averse to rising early if the subject required it.) The difference between Weston and Epstein is that Weston photographed his trees under bright, sharp sunlight which emphasized the pine’s expressionist, dancing limbs and shadows. It is as if the trees are human. In Old Growth, Epstein literally goes out of his way not to anthropomorphize. The photographs present a view of nature that exists for itself, in itself, and without human presence.

Adjacent to Old Growth, a twenty-five-minute, three-screen video work, Forest Waves (2024), plays in the oblong east gallery. Epstein filmed the piece in a dense, dark Berkshire wilderness area. As Forest Waves progresses we are introduced to locations which we see again in different seasons and weathers—mountains, rivers, ferns, conifers, and deciduous trees, small shrubs, rocky hillsides, caves.

The images in Forest Waves move across the three screens to a haunting audio score, a mix of field recordings and a performance by the tonal musicians Mike Tamburo and Samer Ghadry. About a third of the way into the work we see the musicians standing beside a river with mallets and large gongs, creating the score we hear. The hypnotic, otherworldly sounds that the musicians conjure are the forest’s “waves,” which can be heard from the Old Growth gallery. Epstein’s decision to incorporate the artists making the actual sounds is unexpected and inspired. Where Old Growth largely excluded images of human presence, Forest Waves compellingly imagines a new aesthetic relationship between humanity and nature.