"In American Power, Mitch Epstein investigates notions of power, both electrical and political: who has it, what do they do with it and how does it affect other people? From 2003 to 2005, Epstein traveled across the United States to photograph in and around sites where fossil fuel, nuclear, hydroelectric, wind, solar and other alternative power are produced. The resulting pictures contain Epstein's characteristic mix of complex wit, surprising detail, and formal rigor." "While making this series, Epstein encountered Homeland Security obstacles, environmental contamination, corporate impenetrability, and a culture of excess. In an accompanying essay, he tells how these experiences led him to think harder about the artist's role in a country teetering between collapse and transformation." "The images in this book underscore the intersection between energy production and consumption; climate change and corporatism; society and landscape. Here is a portrait of early 21st century America as it clings to past comforts and gropes for a sensible future." --Book Jacket.

Who owns the land, by whose authority, and with what rights? Mitch Epstein examines the American government's ongoing legacy of property confiscation, and how communities gather to resist. Epstein began his latest series in 2017 at Standing Rock, where thousands protested the installation of the Dakota Access Pipeline on Sioux land. Over four years, he charted other contested lands from Pennsylvania and Hawaii to the Mexican border, as well as land loss through wildfires and flooding due to egregious environmental negligence. In keeping with Epstein's 50-year exploration of American life, Property Rights questions the relationship between institutions, civil rights and the rights of nature itself. Acknowledging our bodies and lives as our most fundamental property, the book examines other forms of trespass and destruction in an elegy to the Tree of Life Synagogue massacre, and in photographs of Black Lives Matter protests during COVID-19. Property Rights includes the voices of activists Epstein interviewed while making this deeply personal and political work. In a time of alarming division, the book describes diverse communities in a common fight against politicians and plutocrats willing to sacrifice the people's well-being.