Silver + Chrome
Mitch Epstein
Info: Mitch Epstein has been a pioneer of colour photography since the 1970s. Born 1952 in Holyoke, Massachusetts, his photographs explore society and landscape in the United States. Epstein’s early series Silver + Chrome, alternating between black and white and colour, is now presented in an exhibition for the first time after almost fifty years. He was a student of the legendary street photographer Garry Winogrand at Cooper Union in New York at a time when colour photography was still associated mainly with advertising and considered inadequate for art. Epstein one day asked his professor: Why not colour? – and with Winogrand’s blessing he began to shoot his first roll of Kodachrome film. Between 1973 and 1976 Mitch Epstein explored the medium photographing in the streets, parks and clubs of New York, Los Angeles and New Orleans. His formal compositions are energized by the new artistic possibilities and capture the zeitgeist in a chaotic time between sexual liberation, economic crisis, and the reverberations of the Vietnam War. The portfolio Silver + Chrome contains 17 gelatin silver prints and 18 dye sublimation prints highlighting the striking intensity of the colour works with luminous hues and sharp detail. The photobook Silver + Chrome is published by Steidl.
