MITCH EPSTEIN: RECREATION Opens at the Yancey Richardson Gallery Next Week

For five decades, the photographer Mitch Epstein has taken the American scene as his subject. His iconic images of the nation at leisure in a pre-selfie, pre-digital era will be on view at Yancey Richardson from February 23 through April 8, 2023. Titled Recreation, the exhibition portrays American celebrations, rituals, competitions, travel and other pursuits from 1973 to 1988. With a wry and subtle wit, Epstein presents a late 20th century America seeking fun and relaxation in ways that are compelling, joyful, and sometimes questionable. The complete series of Recreation was recently published in a new updated edition (Steidl, 2022), which expands on the first edition published by Steidl in 2005.

Speaking recently about Recreation, Epstein noted, the work "came out of my excitement about pictures, being out in the world, in places where people were engaging with different kinds of leisure activities. The world itself was less self-conscious. It was pre-digital... There was something more free about it."

Filled with a raw energy, the photographs in the exhibition offer an empathetic nod. In several highly complex compositions, Epstein squeezed an extraordinary amount of information into the frame. Veterans in uniform gather for a Vietnam war parade in New York City. Binocular-toting tourists study mountainous vistas in Glacier National Park. Jubilant partygoers squeeze into an elevator in Dallas. Acrobats launch through the air in Santa Monica. Half-naked bodies pack together on a Queens, NY beach. Each image documents a certain time and a place that no longer exists.

One of the few photographers working in color in the 1970s, Epstein reveled in a highly saturated palette, using color to emphasize the kinetic energy of the images. While a student at Cooper Union in New York City, Epstein's professor, the influential photographer Garry Winogrand, told him, "Put color film in the camera. Forget about the fact that you have color." Notes Epstein, "It became part of my language. The world is in color, so why not photograph in color. It was really that simple."