WASHINGTON, DC.- Today, the National Gallery of Art announced that it has received a landmark gift of 1,261 photographs by Mitch Epstein, one of the most important living American photographers, from the artist and his wife Susan Bell. Representing the full scope of Epstein’s five-decade career, the acquisition establishes the National Gallery as the most significant institutional repository for his work and notably strengthens its holdings in contemporary American photography.

Over the course of his prolific career, Epstein has created an expansive body of work utilizing both richly saturated color and black-and-white with technical precision. His photographs examine American communities and the issues that affect them, from economic change to environmental crisis to civic protest, as well as probing more personal narratives, including his identity as the grandson of East European immigrants and life in his adopted hometown of New York City.

“Mitch Epstein’s photography offers a sweeping and visually compelling chronicle of the United States and beyond from the 1970s through the present,” said Kaywin Feldman, director of the National Gallery of Art. “By bringing the full breadth of his career into the collection and establishing the National Gallery of Art as the leading institutional home for Epstein’s work, we will ensure that future generations will be able to study, experience, and reflect upon this important body of work. We are grateful to Epstein and to Susan Bell for entrusting us with this momentous gift.”

The gift to the National Gallery encompasses master sets and portfolios from Epstein’s major series. It includes his early street photographs and others made during road trips across the United States, as well as pivotal later projects such as A Language of New York and the intimate Family Business.

Also included are Epstein’s thematically ambitious series of the past two decades: American Power, an examination of energy production and environmental consequence; New York Arbor, Rocks and Clouds, and Old Growth, which offer meditations on nature, time, and climate vulnerability; and Property Rights, which documents sites of protest and civic resistance across the country. The gift also includes eleven immersive large-scale prints selected from these series. Several of these will be on view at the National Gallery in exhibitions in 2026.

Born in 1952 in Holyoke, Massachusetts, Epstein developed an interest in photography from an early age, going on to study at the Rhode Island School of Design and then the Cooper Union in New York, where he eventually settled and launched his career. Encouraged by his teacher, Garry Winogrand, and inspired upon seeing the brilliant color in the work of William Eggleston, Epstein embraced color as an essential expressive and compositional tool, just as color photography was beginning to gain acceptance in the fine art world. He developed a rigorous approach to printmaking, illustrated by the exceptional clarity and scale of his work.

Epstein has been inducted into the National Academy of Design (2020) and was awarded the Prix Pictet (2011), Berlin Prize (2008), and a Guggenheim Fellowship (2002). His work has been shown and collected by museums worldwide, including the Museum of Modern Art, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, The Art Institute of Chicago, Tate Modern, the Getty Museum and LACMA, among others. Recent exhibitions include American Nature at the Gallerie d’Italia museum in Torino, Italy (2024–2025); In India at Les Rencontres d'Arles in the Abbey of Montmajour, Arles, France (2022); and Property Rights at The Amon Carter Museum of American Art in Fort Worth, Texas (2020–2021).