It’s safe to say that the legendary American photographer Mitch Epstein has devoted much of his life to visually documenting the moral and social complexities of his native country, and none of his celebrated series of works have greater
It’s safe to say that the legendary American photographer Mitch Epstein has devoted much of his life to visually documenting the moral and social complexities of his native country, and none of his celebrated series of works have greater contemporaneous resonance than his noughties undertaking American Power. Currently being exhibited at Open Eye it’s a staggering collection of large-scale images that throws light upon his homeland’s unwavering and gargantuan consumption of ever-more scarce natural resources from a point of characteristically objective detachment, bringing broader questions of corporate dominance and ethical decay quietly to the fore. Here the 59-year old tells us why leaving the USA for 15 years made him revaluate what it was to be American, and how stumbling across his high school year book made an artist renowned for describing himself as not being politically motivated, realise that he was perhaps far more engaged as a young man than he ever gives himself credit for.
When did you first become interested in communicating via the medium of photography?
My beginnings in photography go back to when I was a student at a New England boarding school in the late 60s. I was the editor for my high school yearbook. It was a very traditional male boarding school and it was at a time that was really quite tumultuous. The Vietnam War was taking place and the year I graduated I wanted to do something more maverick with the book – I wanted to break it open somehow; to see how photography could put the year that I graduated into the context of something larger. That was probably my real beginning, what spurred my interest in photography as a communicative medium.
You’ve never described yourself as a political artist but that sounds like the work of a politically engaged young man…
Absolutely. I was quite surprised when I went back and looked at this high school yearbook because, as you say, I have never described myself as a political artist, and yet I had done these seminar discussions on subjects like the war and the environment. I’d actually forgotten that I’d done that. I’ve certainly been mindful and had concerns about environmental issues over the years, but I didn’t come to the project American Power as an environmental activist, or with a preconceived agenda.
Then why the provocative title American Power?
(Laughs) I didn’t even know it was going to be titled American Power when I began it in 2003, but when I did define it as such, I wanted to enable it to be somewhat elastic and to see how far out I could let it span with just the very notion of power itself. I do work in a certain documentary tradition, but I’m not a strict documentarian, and I didn’t plan this as the definitive book or project. It wasn’t even really begun as a book, but as a project looking into the state of American power as it relates to energy. It’s a complex and unwieldy subject, and I wanted to let it be such because that was a way for me to work artistically.
What did the series teach you about the American psyche?
What I understood from doing American Power is that the American psyche is very influenced by a certain historical precedent, which goes back to this era of when we were pioneering out way out through the West. We’ve always had the sense of our nation as this country of big space, and of having this primary right to protect individual ownership. My generation in particular are still coming out of this mind-set where we designed a certain lifestyle based on the suburb. The whole model that, regrettably, we have established as an example and exported to developing countries is sadly now very difficult to retract. I think what we as Americans can do now, and have the responsibility to do, is to come up with a new and more viable model, because we have to take greater responsibility for what we’ve created.
Do you think what’s been created is a corporate monster?
I think what the project calls to light, and what was very central to the whole thing, was where corporations sit within this whole power structure. The interdependency between corporations, government, the power of the media and civic power – all these forces are in some complex interrelationship to each other. But in the end, I do feel the corporations do have the upper hand.
Why do you never describe yourself as politically motivated?
I don’t want to be in service to a political agenda – a political artist is one that is in service to one-dimensional thinking. Yet the power of politics was one of the many powers I felt was essential to investigate with American Power. I’m glad I did because I think it added an important dimensionality to the work. I spent about a decade or so from the late 70s – well, more than that, almost 15 years – where a lot of my geographical orientation was outside America. By the time I came to work on my project Family Business – which was a piece of work I did about my father and my home place of Holyoke, Massachusetts – I began to focus in on the ways in which things were no longer working in the way that they once did. My father believed in the ethic that if you worked hard you’d do well, and all of a sudden those beliefs were unravelling for him. By looking deeply into his life and peeling back the layers to understand in what ways he was both victim and also participant to his situation, I began to understand that there was a crack in the sense of promise and possibility I grew up with.
American Power exhibits at Open Eye Gallery until December 23.
