Rocks and Clouds

Rocks and Clouds collects Mitch Epstein's large-format black-and-white photographs of New York City's bedrock and sky, made as a study of time.

Epstein photographed in all five boroughs with an 8x10 field camera, setting rocks that last millions of years against clouds that evaporate as they are watched. The series is half of a pair with New York Arbor (2013) on how the natural world persists in a city. Steidl's text points to cloud wedges that engulf a cargo ship, buildings that recall constructivist paintings, and erratics standing in a park or on a sidewalk. Traditional Chinese painters and earthwork artists such as Robert Smithson, who worked with the mirroring of sky and ground, were inspirations. Steidl published the book in English in December 2017, at 160 pages with 70 images, clothbound in a slipcase.

Epstein has photographed the landscape and culture of America for half a century and was a pioneer of 1970s fine-art colour photography. He received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2002, the Berlin Prize in 2008 and the Prix Pictet in 2011. His seventeen books, most of them from Steidl, include American Power (2009) and Family Business (2004), which won the Kraszna-Krausz Photography Book Award.