All Images © Mitch Epstein, from “New York Arbor” (Steidl)

Mitch Epstein‘s new book, “New York Arbor” includes photographs of the idiosyncratic trees that inhabit New York City; these pictures underscore the importance of trees to urban life and their complex relationship to their human counterparts. Rooted in New York’s parks, gardens, sidewalks, and cemeteries, some trees grow wild, some are contortionists adapting to their constricted surroundings, and others are pruned into prize specimens.  Join Mitch Epstein at Cooper Union tonight, Monday, April 29 at 7:00 pm for a discussion about “New York Arbor.” A book signing at Dashwood Books is Tuesday, May 7th.

“Okawa Village, Tosa County, Kochi Prefecture,” 2007, © Toshio Shibata

One of Japan’s leading landscape photographers, Toshio Shibata, is being introduced to new American audiences at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts. The exhibition, “Constructed Landscapes,” opens April 2o, and runs through October 6, 2013. The exhibition features 28 of Shibata’s large-scale works that consider the relationship between human infrastructure and nature through images of major engineering projects, like bridges and dams. This is the first time his color photographs are showing the in United States. “As stunning as Toshio Shibata’s photographs are, they are infused with deep awareness of humanity’s place in nature,” PEM curator of photography Phillip Prodger said in a statement announcing the show. “As with all the best landscape photographers, his works cause us to reflect on what it means to live in this world.” (more…)

Provoke No. 2., 1969  All Images © Daido Moriyama, courtesy of the Steven Kasher Gallery.

Steven Kasher Gallery is presenting an exhibition of new and classic photographs by the important Japanese photographer Daido Moriyama. This is the largest and most comprehensive exhibition of Moriyama’s work ever mounted in an American art gallery. Daido Moriyama: Now and Now will be on view from March 28^th through May 4th, 2013. Steven Kasher Gallery is located at 521 W. 23rd St., New York, NY 10011. Gallery hours are Tuesday through Saturday, 11am to 6pm.

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All images ©Frank Hallam Day

Frank Hallam Day‘s artistic interests revolve around the themes of culture and history, and humanity’s footprint on the natural world. For months he traveled around Florida, photographing recreational vehicles lodged in jungle settings at night. He used hand-held lights and a tripod; the RV occupants never knew he was there. The resulting images, he explains in an artist’s statement, suggest alienation from dark, ominous nature. “[The RVs] crouch like steel insects in the woods, shining, hard carapaces protecting a soft interior. They brand themselves with labels asserting a desired yet ironically thwarted relationship with nature:  Escaper, Conquest, Sunset Trail, Wilderness, Cougar, Falcon…Nothing is more American than an RV, but these pictures suggest other impulses underlying the sheen of the American dream:  flight, concealment, isolation, bewilderment and withdrawal.” Kehrer Verlag has published the work in Hallam’s new book Nocturnal, which will be available March 19. (more…)

Funakoshi: 95% of this fishing community was destroyed by the tsunami.  All Images © Michel Huneault/Cosmos/Polaris.

An earthquake in the Tōhoku region of Japan triggered a tsunami that devastated the Pacific coastal area and resulted in nuclear disaster two days later, on March 11, 2011. This tragedy resulted in 15,880 deaths, 6,135 injuries, 2,694 missing persons, and hundreds of thousands of buildings damaged or completely destroyed.

Photographer Michel Huneault, who lives in Montreal, went to Tōhoku 13 months after the catastrophic event, splitting his time between documenting and volunteering. The result is a multilayered project that documents more than 155 miles of coastline, from Fukushima to Kesennuma, over a period of three months in late spring 2012. Huneault’s series mixes photographs, composite panoramas, HD videos and sound captures. “I want the viewer to experience in multiple ways the weight of emptiness and absence one must carry within the area. This is a necessary step to understand the larger impacts of this event.” To see more work from the series, visit Huneault’s website.

To see other photography series about Tōhoku, click here. (more…)