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Joel Sternfeld

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Joel Sternfeld
Born (1944-06-30) June 30, 1944 (age 80)
Brooklyn, New York, U.S.
Alma materDartmouth College
Known forPhotography
Notable work
  • American Prospects (1987)
  • Walking the High Line (2001)
Websitewww.joelsternfeld.net

Joel Sternfeld (born June 30, 1944)[1] is an American fine-art photographer and educator known for his large-format color pictures of contemporary American life and identity. His work contributed to the establishment of color photography as a respected artistic medium.[2] Sternfeld’s photography follows in the tradition of American photographers such as Walker Evans and Robert Frank, documenting people and places with sensitivity. His work often conveys a sense of beauty and melancholy, capturing moments of hope, despair, and tenderness. Since the publication of his landmark book American Prospects in 1987, Sternfeld’s photography has intertwined conceptual and political themes, reflecting his engagement with history, landscape theory, and the passage of time.[3]

He teaches at Sarah Lawrence College in Yonkers, New York.[4]

Life and work

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Sternfeld earned a BA from Dartmouth College. He began taking color photographs in 1970 after learning the color theory of Johannes Itten and Josef Albers' book Interaction of Colour (1963), Sternfeld investigated the relationship between the qualities and densities of different colors within the frame. Borrowing a thought from the critic Lewis Mumford, Sternfeld felt strongly that each historic period had a characteristic color scheme. He turned to dedicated, non-primary colors to represent the pseudo-sophistication of late seventies and early eighties America.[5]

His work often highlights the beauty and complexity of American life while also addressing themes of environmental intervention, industrialization, and suburbanization.[6]

First Pictures (1969-1976)

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Sternfeld initially started taking pictures in 1969 with a 35mm camera and Kodachrome slide film. These pictures mark the beginning of Sternfeld’s interest in documenting the American condition. The pictures are an insight into the development of his color arrangements which eventually resulted in a new language for color photography most notable in American Prospects. Sternfeld, in addition to other colorists like William Eggleston and Stephen Shore were crucial pioneers in the medium.[7] This body of work was first published in 2012 by Steidl publishing house.

American Prospects (1978-1984)

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American Prospects, (first published in 1987, most recently published in 2012) is Sternfeld's most known book and explores the complexity of human-altered landscapes in the United States. He began it in 1978, when color photography was still in its infancy as an art medium. Using a large-format camera, his photographs harken back to the traditions of 19th century photography, yet are applied to everyday scenes, like a Wet n' Wild waterpark, or a suburban street in the South.[8] He captured the faltering "prospects" (both views and opportunities) of the time. Because of his early street work, Sternfeld was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship, which funded his initial tour of the states. The American Prospects photos are of people, buildings, and mostly landscapes from the multiple trips Sternfeld took between 1978 and 1984.[9]

Campagna Romana: The Countryside of Ancient Rome

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Campagna Romana was initially published in 1992 by Knopf publishing house. After being awarded the Rome Prize fellowship, Sternfeld extensively photographed the countryside around Rome. The pictures document the interaction between the grand romantic ruins and the invasion of modernity. Several of the images are created to form panoramic images that sometime stretch over several images. This technique presents the sweeping vistas of the countryside while also setting up contrasts between the images within each piece. In one such work, a crumbling fragment of an ancient wall huddles forlornly in one frame of a four-panel piece, surrounded by the scaffolding-clad buildings of a new apartment complex.[10]

On This Site: Landscape in Memoriam

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On This Site: Landscape in Memoriam (first published with Steidl in 1996), is a collection of pictures from famous crime sites in America. The eerily normal locations are seemingly remains left behind after tragedies, their hidden stories disturbingly invisible. Next to each photograph is text about the events that happened at that location.[11]

Hart Island a Potter's Field in New York City

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From 1991 to 1994 Sternfeld worked with Melinda Hunt to document New York City's public cemetery on Hart Island, resulting in the book "Hart Island" (1998).[12]

Stranger Passing

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Initially published by Bulfinch in 2001, and then by Steidl in 2012, Stranger Passing consists of a series of portraits that have roots in his initial project American Prospects. Over a period of fifteen years Joel Sternfeld travelled across America and took portrait photographs that form in Douglas R. Nickel’s words an "intelligent, unscientific, interpretive sampling of what Americans looked like at the century’s end." Unlike historical portraits which represent significant people in staged surroundings, Sternfeld’s subjects are uncannily "normal": a banker having an evening meal, a teenager collecting shopping carts in a parking lot, a homeless man holding his bedding.

Using August Sander’s classic photograph of three peasants on their way to a dance as a starting point, Sternfeld employed a conceptual strategy that amounts to a new theory of the portrait, which might be termed "The Circumstantial Portrait".[13]

Exhibitions

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  • 1976: Recent Color Photographs by Joel Sternfeld and Recent Work by Lois Johnson, Peale House Galleries, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, PA
  • 1980: Daniel Wolf, Inc., New York, NY
  • 1981: Larry Fink and Joel Sternfeld: Photographs, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA
  • 1981: The New Color, Everson Museum of Art, Syracuse, NY
  • 1982: Joel Sternfeld, Blue Sky, Oregon Center for the Photographic Arts, Portland, OR
  • 1984: American Prospects, Daniel Wolf, Inc., New York, NY
  • 1984: Three Americans (Jim Goldberg, Robert Adams, Joel Sternfeld), Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY
  • 1985: Joel Sternfeld, Higashikawa International Photo Festival, Higashikawa, Japan
  • 1985: Joel Sternfeld, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH
  • 1985: New Color Photography, The Halsted Gallery, Birmingham, MI
  • 1985: Joel Sternfeld, Afterimage Gallery, Dallas, TX
  • 1987–1989: American Prospects: The Photographs of Joel Sternfeld, Museum of Fine Arts Houston, Houston, TX; Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore, MD; Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit, MI; Museum of Contemporary Art, La Jolla, CA; The National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, Canada
  • 1989: Contemporary Photographs, Pace/MacGill Gallery, New York, NY
  • 1991: Campagna Romana: The Roman Countryside, Pace/MacGill Gallery, New York, NY
  • 1997: On This Site, Pace Wildenstein MacGill, Los Angeles, CA
  • 2001: Stranger Passing, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA
  • 2001: Walking the High Line, Pace Wildenstein Gallery, New York, NY
  • 2002: Treading on Kings: Protesting the G8 in Genoa, WhiteBox Art Center, New York, NY
  • 2002–2003: Joel Sternfeld, The Photographers’ Gallery, London, United Kingdom
  • 2004: American Prospects and Before, Luhring Augustine, New York, NY
  • 2005: Sweet Earth: Experimental Utopias in America, Luhring Augustine, New York, NY
  • 2008: The Geography of No Place: American Utopias, Buchmann Galerie, Berlin, Germany
  • 2008: Oxbow Archive, Luhring Augustine, New York, NY
  • 2009: Joel Sternfeld: On This Site, Buchmann Galerie, Berlin, Germany
  • 2011: Joel Sternfeld – Farbfotografien seit 1970, Museum Folkwang, Essen, Germany.[14]
  • 2011–2012: C/O Berlin, Berlin, Germany
  • 2011–2012: Joel Sternfeld – Color Photographs since 1970, Foam Fotografiemuseum Amsterdam, Netherlands.[15]
  • 2012: Joel Sternfeld – Color Photographs since 1970, Albertina, Wien, Austria.[16]
  • 2012: Joel Sternfeld: First Pictures, Luhring Augustine, New York, NY
  • 2012: Joel Sternfeld: Campagna Romana, Buchmann Galerie, Berlin, Germany
  • 2013–2014: Carnegie International, Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, PA
  • 2017: Joel Sternfeld: Colour Photographs 1977-1988, Beetles + Huxley, London, England
  • 2017–2018: Joel Sternfeld: Stranger Passing / To Joseph Palmer, Buchmann Galerie, Berlin, Germany

Awards

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Publications

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  • Campagna Romana: The Countryside of Ancient Rome. New York, NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 1992. ISBN 978-0-67941-578-7.
  • Hart Island. Zurich, Berlin, New York: Scalo, 1998. ISBN 978-3-931141-90-5. Includes a text by Melinda Hunt.
  • Treading on Kings. Göttingen: Steidl, 2003. ISBN 978-3-88243-837-6.
  • When It Changed. Göttingen: Steidl, 2008. ISBN 978-3-8652-1-278-8.
  • Sweet Earth-Experimental Utopias in America. Göttingen: Steidl, 2008. ISBN 978-3-86521-124-8.
  • Oxbow Archive. Göttingen: Steidl, 2008. ISBN 978-3-86521-786-8.
  • iDubai. Göttingen: Steidl, 2010. ISBN 978-3-86521-916-9.
  • First Pictures. Göttingen: Steidl, 2011. ISBN 978-3-86930-309-3.
  • Walking the High Line. Göttingen: Steidl, 2012. ISBN 978-3-86521-982-4.
  • On This Site: Landscape in Memorian. Göttingen: Steidl, 2012. ISBN 978-3-86930-434-2.
  • Stranger Passing. Göttingen: Steidl, 2012. ISBN 978-3-86930-499-1.
  • American Prospects. New York, NY: Distributed Art Publishers / Göttingen: Steidl, 2012. ISBN 978-3-88243-915-1.
  • Rome After Rome. Göttingen: Steidl, 2018. ISBN 3958292631
  • Landscape as Longing: Queens, New York. Göttingen: Steidl, 2017. ISBN 3958290329.
  • Our Loss. Göttingen: Steidl, 2019. ISBN 978-3-95829-658-9.

Collections

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Sternfeld's work is held in the following public collections:

References

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  1. ^ "Museum of Contemporary Photography". www.mocp.org. Retrieved 2019-06-01.
  2. ^ Jobey, Liz (17 October 2008). "In focus: Liz Jobey looks at the work of US photographer Joel Sternfeld". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 2019-06-01 – via www.theguardian.com.
  3. ^ O'Hagan, Sean (11 January 2017). "The drifter: Joel Sternfeld on his sly glimpses of wild America – seen from the endless highway". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 2019-06-01 – via www.theguardian.com.
  4. ^ "Joel Sternfeld". www.sarahlawrence.edu. Retrieved 2024-09-01.
  5. ^ "Color Interaction and the Color Photograph". Joel Sternfeld. 2021-08-23. Retrieved 2024-11-13.
  6. ^ May, Jessica (March 15, 2012). Joel Sternfeld's Early Pictures (1st ed.). Steidl.
  7. ^ "First Pictures - Joel Sternfeld". Steidl Verlag. Retrieved 2023-08-17.
  8. ^ "Jacket Copy for 2003 Edition American Prospects". Joel Sternfeld. 23 August 2021. Retrieved 2022-08-26.
  9. ^ Rainbow, Greta (2020-06-05). "Joel Sternfeld's American Prospects". The Brooklyn Rail. Retrieved 2023-08-17.
  10. ^ "Review/Photography; The Campagna Romana Viewed by Joel Sternfeld (Published 1991)". 1991-09-20. Retrieved 2023-08-17.
  11. ^ "On This Site - Joel Sternfeld". Steidl Verlag. Retrieved 2023-08-17.
  12. ^ Hunt, Melinda; Joel Sternfeld. Hart Island. ISBN 3-931141-90-X.
  13. ^ "Stranger Passing - Joel Sternfeld". Steidl Verlag. Retrieved 2023-08-17.
  14. ^ "Farbfotografien seit 1970". museum-folkwang.de. Retrieved 4 July 2014.
  15. ^ "Exhibition: 'Joel Sternfeld – Color Photographs since 1970' at Foam, Amsterdam". Foam Fotografiemuseum Amsterdam. 3 March 2012. Retrieved 4 July 2014.
  16. ^ "Joel Sternfeld – Farbfotografien seit 1970". albertina.at. Retrieved 13 April 2017.
  17. ^ "Photography Archives - Page 8 of 22". John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. Retrieved 2022-08-26.
  18. ^ Ivey, Bill; Princenthal, Nancy; Dowley, Jennifer (2001). Westbrook, Adele (ed.). A creative legacy: A history of the National Endowment for the Arts Visual Artists' Fellowship Program, 1966-1995. Abrams Books. ISBN 0810941708. LCCN 2001001355. OCLC 1042969410.
  19. ^ "LECTURER TO DISCUSS AMERICAN ROOTLESSNESS". Chicago Tribune. 23 October 1987. Retrieved 12 June 2024.
  20. ^ "Photography Archives".
  21. ^ Strangers: The First ICP Triennial of Photography and Video. New York: International Center of Photography. 2003. p. 243. ISBN 978-3-88243-929-8. Retrieved 12 June 2024.
  22. ^ "Prestigious award for photographer". The Guardian. 2 March 2004. Retrieved 12 June 2024.
  23. ^ Platt, Bill (20 June 2013). "New Montgomery Fellow Walks a Thin Line". The Montgomery Fellows. Retrieved 12 June 2024.
  24. ^ "Honorary Fellowship". The Royal Photographic Society. Retrieved 12 June 2024.
  25. ^ "Joel Sternfeld". The Museum of Modern Art. Retrieved 2019-06-01.
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