Reproduced from Mitch Epstein’s website…
Mitch Epstein’s current work examines how energy is produced and used in the American landscape. Made on forays to energy production sites and their environs, these pictures question the power of nature, government, corporations, and mass consumption in the United States.
I was rummaging through my photography bookmarks last night and was happily reminded of Nadav Kander.
His work is so excellent. As you’ll note in the post below, I am short on words today. I’m experiencing that classic scenario of many ideas and lots of work I would like to be creating without any financial means to produce it. It isn’t that it’s expensive to produce, but rather that time producing work is time that I am not generating income.
I’m working on balancing this better. It is painful to watch autumn pass without making much personal work.
MUST WORK FASTER!!!
I intend to return to these posts, or perhaps to post again with more insightful discussion of Kander and Gronsky’s work.
Big deep breath—and now topping off my coffee mug.
Wow! So I made my most prized internet discovery today—completely by accident too. This is no secret stuff, it just happens to be the case that I was entirely unaware of it until now. This find confirms my belief that life in the 1930s and 40s was the most beautiful in all of history. Everything was made by professional designers. Hardly anyone was overweight. If you look at these photographs, literally everything is beautiful in my opinion. Life was full of modern convenience, but the aesthetic was still “Old World”. Everything has a naturalness which stems from a lack of plastic. I hate plastic.
Anyways, I stumbled upon the Library of Congress’ color photograph collection from the 1930s through 1940s. Mostly WPA stuff. Totally incredible! I nearly cried I wanted to live in that time so badly. You can dig and dig for hours and then do it all over again. Really really great stuff! Enjoy!