In photos: honouring the remnants of America’s ancient forests

Hail­ing from Holyoke, Mass­a­chu­setts, pho­tog­ra­ph­er Mitch Epstein came of age dur­ing the height of mid-cen­tu­ry Amer­i­can sub­ur­bia. Just beyond the per­fect­ly man­i­cured res­i­den­tial devel­op­ments of his child­hood lay the majes­tic Berk­shires, a north­ern seg­ment of the Appalachi­an Moun­tains that have become the hall­mark of New England’s picaresque land­scape for centuries.

“The forests of the Berk­shires beck­oned as an escape as I got old­er in the ​‘50s and ​‘60s,” Epstein says. ​“By the time I reached ado­les­cence, I was uncom­fort­able with the sub­ur­ban built envi­ron­ment. Nature was a place to get lost in; it was chaos and reju­ve­nat­ing in a way that felt wel­come, and not alien.”

Epstein lat­er returned to the land of his child­hood while research­ing a new project explor­ing the trees that had inspired New Eng­land writ­ers like Her­man Melville, Emi­ly Dick­in­son, and Robert Frost. He entered the Mohawk Trail State For­est with an 8×10 field cam­era and lens­es in his back­pack, no gear, and lit­tle hik­ing expe­ri­ence, for an encounter that would change his life.

Epstein left the for­est with a vision that would become Old Growth, his 17^th mono­graph and exhi­bi­tion now on view at Yancey Richard­son in New York. The series brings togeth­er pho­tographs made between 2017 – 2024, craft­ing an exquis­ite por­trait of America’s last ancient woodlands.

Since the inva­sion of Euro­pean colonis­ers 500 years ago, more than 95% of indige­nous forests have been destroyed. Now pro­tect­ed by the Bureau of Land Man­age­ment and the U.S. For­est Ser­vice, the remain­ing old-growth forests con­tain trees old­er than the nation itself, dat­ing back hun­dreds, if not thou­sands, of years.

Epstein pho­tographed these Amer­i­can majesties with rev­er­ence and respect, allow­ing us to see both lit­er­al­ly and metaphor­i­cal­ly the for­est through the trees. Here we see ​“super­stars” like the giants of California’s leg­endary Sequoia Nation­al Park and the fabled Joshua trees of Cima Dome in the Mojave Nation­al Pre­serve, along­side the less­er-known bald cypress­es that rise from the Black Riv­er in Cape Fear, North Carolina.

“I was out on trails, some­times walk­ing sev­er­al miles a day with gear on my back and it gave me a greater respect for what the fron­tier pho­tog­ra­phers did back in 19^th cen­tu­ry,” Epstein says.

“I made three trips to make pho­tographs in the ancient bristle­cone pine for­est in White Moun­tains of Cal­i­for­nia,” he con­tin­ues point­ing to the scenes of wiz­ened trees sprout­ing from moun­tain­ous ter­rain. ​“It’s impos­si­ble to describe the utter enchant­ment and oth­er world­li­ness of this land­scape, with trees that have lived for thou­sands of years, in what seems like inhos­pitable set of circumstances.”

The exhi­bi­tion also includes For­est Waves, a new mul­ti-chan­nel video and sound instal­la­tion that brings view­ers in the Berk­shires as the sea­sons change, immers­ing them in the expe­ri­ence with sound­scapes by tonal musi­cians Mike Tam­buro and Samer Ghadry made iin these same woods.

“There’s the mys­tery of wilder­ness, but there’s also the pro­found sci­ence that we still have so much to learn from,” Epstein says. ​“If we don’t pro­tect a lit­tle bit does remain, we’re real­ly just shoot­ing our­selves in the foot.”

Mitch Epstein: Old Growth is on view Sep­tem­ber 5 – Octo­ber 19, 2024 at Yancey Richard­son in New York. The series will be on view in a solo exhi­bi­tion at Gal­lerie d’Italia in Turin, Italy from Octo­ber 16, 2024 – March 2, 2025. The book is pub­lished by Stei­dl.