Mitch Epstein State of the Union

State of the Union pairs two bodies of work by Mitch Epstein: his street photographs of American life from the 1970s and 1980s, and his later series on the energy industry.

Hatje Cantz published it in November 2010 in German and English, as a 120-page hardcover with 59 photographs. The Kunstmuseum Bonn edited it with Stephan Berg and Christoph Schreier, and Annett Frey designed it. Texts are by Schreier, Berg and Gisela Parak. The museum showed the work in 2010-11. Recreation: American Photographs (1973-88) is street photography built on chance encounters in everyday American life. American Power, which Epstein began in 2003, turns to the energy industry, with cooling towers and refineries towering over everything around them.

Epstein was born in Holyoke, Massachusetts, in 1952. He graduated from Cooper Union and has received a Guggenheim Fellowship (2002), the Berlin Prize (2008) and the Prix Pictet (2011).