Galerie Thomas Zander is pleased to present two exhibitions of renowned American photographers Mitch Epstein and Susan Meiselas featuring photographs from the dynamic and complex era of the 1970s. While Epstein’s early series Silver + Chrome will be exhibited for the first time, this is Meiselas’ first show with the gallery.

Mitch Epstein has been a pioneer of colour photography since the 1970s. Born 1952 in Holyoke, Massachu­setts, his photographs explore society and landscape in the United States. Epstein’s early series Silver + Chrome, alternating between black and white and colour, is now presented in an exhibition for the first time after almost fifty years. He was a student of the legendary street photographer Garry Winogrand at Cooper Union in New York at a time when colour photography was still associated mainly with advertising and considered inadequate for art. Epstein one day asked his professor: “Why not colour?“ – and with Winogrand’s blessing he began to shoot his first roll of Kodachrome film. Between 1973 and 1976 Mitch Epstein explored the medium photographing in the streets, parks and clubs of New York, Los Angeles and New Orleans. His formal compositions are energized by the new artistic possibilities and capture the zeitgeist in a chaotic time between sexual liberation, economic crisis, and the rever­berations of the Vietnam War. The portfolio Silver + Chrome contains 17 gelatin silver prints and 18 dye sublimation prints highlighting the striking intensity of the colour works with luminous hues and sharp detail. The photobook Silver + Chrome is published by Steidl.

Mitch Epstein’s work is collected by international institutions, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, Tate Modern, London, and the Musée d’Art moderne de la Ville de Paris. He was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship for his multimedia project Family Business and received the Prix Pictet for his seminal series American Power. Epstein’s most recent solo exhibitions include Property Rights at the Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth, Texas and In India 1978-1989 at Les Rencontres d‘Arles, France.