The trees photographed by Mitch Epstein and presented at the Gallerie d’Italia in Turin seem ready to whisper stories from time immemorial. Captured in color and with a large-format camera, these majestic creations appear in strikingly large prints, standing alone or among their peers. With their lace-like branches, twisted trunks or canopies lost in the clouds, these statuesque beings resemble ancient monuments. Some are even older than the Egyptian pyramids, like California’s Bristlecone pine, nicknamed “Methuselah,” perhaps the oldest tree in the world at almost 5,000 years old.
Sequoias, Sitka spruces, yellow birches and bigleaf maples: Epstein, one of the great landscape photographers of contemporary America, spent several years scouring his country in search of old-growth forests – those rare, untouched woodland areas that have escaped human activity or tornadoes. Yet Epstein is not a nature photographer nor a photojournalist, but all his landscapes carry a political undertone. There’s no question of letting the viewer sink into blissful contemplation: The beauty he depicts is on borrowed time, doomed by human activity.
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