Images capture the timeless beauty of America’s ancient forests

Gnarled, wild and majestic: these two very different trees in California form part of Mitch Epstein’s quest to photograph ancient forests across the US.

The photographer’s Old Growth project took shape in the summer of 2020, when he learned that there were rare pockets of old-growth forests in Western Massachusetts – those that have grown for hundreds, or even thousands, of years. One-third of the world’s forests today are old-growth, but since 1990, their range has decreased by 81 million hectares.

Over the next four years, Epstein travelled to remote locations across the US to find ancient native trees and document what we stand to lose through climate change. He captured firs, oaks, birches and maples, including this denizen of the Ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest (top), taken in California’s White Mountains in 2022, and this towering sequoia (pictured below), snapped on the Congress Trail in 2021 in the state’s Sequoia National Park.

The photographer said the project was a departure for him. “I didn’t think that I could bring something new to so-called nature photography,” he said in an interview included in his new book American Nature, which brings together photographs of his work. “Maybe part of my decision to photograph Old Growth was this realisation: that there is now no wilderness that hasn’t been touched by humans in some way, even if it’s not immediately obvious.”