Part testimony, part invention, this remarkable group of pictures constitutes a visual poem to New York City. These images probe the very meaning of contemporary urban life. Brutal and humorous, narcissistic and giving, Mitch Epstein's city is a crucible of incongruities.
Epstein's unorthodox method for combining black-and-white and color pictures provides a shrewd reinvention of photographic idioms. Employing an extraordinary diversity of forms, he moves from still life to street work to portraiture to abstraction with equal mastery.
In The city, Epstein offers what would seem to be the impossible: a fresh and profound view of New York City. For him, the myth of New York cannot be separated from its reality. Here is one man's intimate view of the city, a view as surreal as it is true.