Join us for a presentation by artist Mitch Epstein, whose photographs are on view in three National Gallery exhibitions: Dear America: Artists Explore the American Experience, Beneath the Surface: Mining and American Photography, and American Icon: The US Flag in Art. Epstein will discuss his creative practice and engagement with the exhibition themes.  

Mitch Epstein (born 1952, Holyoke, MA) has photographed the landscape and culture of America for 50 years. A graduate of Cooper Union, he became a pioneer of 1970s fine-art color photography. His mixed media work includes films, moving image with sound installations, and performance. Epstein has been inducted into the National Academy of Design (2020) and has been awarded the Prix Pictet (2011), Berlin Prize (2008), and a Guggenheim Fellowship (2002). His 17 books include 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’s most recent exhibition, American Nature, assembles three self-contained yet integrated photographic series (Old Growth, Property Rights, American Power), a multi-channel video-sound installation with tonal music performed in a forest (Forest Waves), and a looped projection with music (Darius Kinsey: Clear Cut). Together these five pieces investigate notions of wilderness and human society, and their both collaborative and troubled co-existence. Epstein lives in New York City and Massachusetts.