Mitch Epstein at Brent Sikkema - Review of Exhibitions - Brief Article

Mitch Epstein's photographs look to perfectly capture the enduring photographic romanticism invoked by means of Henri Cartier-Bresson's notion of seizing a decisive visual twinkling of an eye His pictures are in the stylistic tradition of Doisneau, Roy DeCarava and W Eugene Smith and mirror an almost old-fashioned ability to recognize an iconic second and distill a meaningful pictorial instant on the outside of the stream of randomly intersecting existential events

These color photographs, all taken in fresh York City, reflect an impressive range in photographic temperament and emotional bearing. Epstein's work can be utterly romantic, as in his photograph of an abandoned, decaying theater. discharge through the window of an upper floor opposite the theater, the picture crisply captures a fragment of revers and antique signage upon the window in the picture's sharp foreground, adroitly exploiting the profundity of field to present the without contents marquee, deserted ticket booth and passersby in a humane soft focus that serves as a sweet, nostalgic tribute to the urban past. In another work he captures a fashionable midtown shopper (Henri Bendel shopping bag upon one arm) in a comical interlude of unlikely class intermingling. The stylish shopper has stopped to give a light (cigarette to cigarette) to a associate smoker of smaller stature, and a strikingly different taste in fashion.

In a picture of almost pastoral serenity, the jagged architectural horizon of midtown divides the photograph into sum of two units vivid pictorial fields: a hazy azure sky above and, below, the narrow almost indeterminate form of a carefully enclosureed suit jacket at rest upon a green lawn in Central Park. Epstein has also captured an arbitrary snapshot of what appears to be a suburban family clustered below a giant Calvin Klein ad. There is a teenage son hair electrified with mousse; his teenage sister, her drawn out dress swirling around her as she elegantly turns; and baby sister and mom anonymous with their backs to the camera, their neighborhoods linked by both physical carriage and their haphazard familial proximity to single another.

When single looks through Epstein's eyes, the city becomes a vast collection of images waiting to happen. His pictures can be elusively meaningful, edgeless and formal, quietly amusing or simply peculiar, on the other hand they are always charged with the distinctive metaphorical power inherent in novel York City's endless parade of visual possibilities.

COPYRIGHT 2000 Brant Publications, Inc.

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