Mitch Epstein’s botanical photography leans toward a bent unlike that of the average garden shutterbug. Over the last year he has set about documenting the grand, the tortuous, and the strange among the trees of New York City, traveling to each of the five boroughs in an effort to archive our many metropolitan behemoths.
Epstein’s central models range from the scarred bark of the weeping birch at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, covered in the graffiti of vandals and romantics; to the centuries-old tulip tree of Staten Island, hidden behind the younger foliage of its own offspring. It’s a study in history through the simplicity of a lens. —MN
