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Epstein, Mitch : American Power

Gerhard Steidl Druckerei Und Verlag, Gottingen, Germany, 2009

ISBN 3865219241

First Edition / First Printing. As New in As New Dust Jacket. 150 pages. Collection of color photographs on subject. One of the most important photography books of our time. The First Hardcover Edition. Precedes and should not be confused with all other subsequent editions. Published in a small and limited first print run as a hardcover original only. The First Edition is now scarce. A brilliant production by Mitch Epstein and Gerhard Steidl: Oversize-volume format. The book weighs 4 pounds. Gray cloth boards with titles embossed on cover and spine, as issued. Photographs and text by Mitch Epstein. Printed on pristine-white, thick coated stock paper in Gottingen, Germany to the highest standards. In matching pictorial DJ with titles on the cover and spine, as issued. Presents Mitch Epstein's "American Power". His ground-breaking and ongoing project. "Tackles one of the most loaded issues in the nation's agenda: What and who powers America? Between 2003 and 2008, prompted by the evacuation of an environmentally contaminated Ohio town, Epstein travelled the United States to document the country's energy hot spots, where fossil fuel, nuclear, hydro-electric, wind, and solar power are produced, encountering further contaminations, Homeland Security obstacles, corporate invincibility, and the occasional token of hope. In a post-Katrina and post-Patriot Act America, the angle of engagement permitted Epstein often varied so that many of the power plants and refineries were shot from an enforced distance ('If you were Muslim, you'd be cuffed and taken in for questioning', he quotes an FBI agent in West Virginia). Alongside these classic depictions of looming, obdurate power, Epstein includes more idiomatic images: A woman wading in the water above Niagara Falls, father-and-son motorcross bikers, a tree cluttered with debris, which bring the issues back to human scale. In an accompanying essay, he tells us how these experiences deepened his political convictions, and led him to think harder about the artist's role in a country teetering between collapse and transformation. Here is his portrait of early 21st-century America, as it clings to past comforts and gropes for a more sensible and sustainable future" (Publisher's blurb). "My aim is to engage with the complexity of the cultural state of things rather than reduce it to visual sloganeering" (Mitch Epstein). An absolute "must-have" title for Mitch Epstein collectors. This copy is very prominently and beautifully signed in black ink-pen on the half-title page by Mitch Epstein. It is signed directly on the page itself, not on a tipped-in page. This title is a contemporary photography classic. This is one of few such signed copies of the First Hardcover Edition/First Printing still available online and is in especially fine condition: Clean, crisp, and bright, a pristine beauty. A scarce signed copy thus. 63 color plates. Mitch Epstein's "Family Business" was selected as one of the greatest photography books in "The Photobook". One of the most brilliant photographers of our time. A fine copy. (SEE ALSO OTHER MITCH EPSTEIN TITLES IN OUR CATALOG). ISBN 3865219241.

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