Joel Sternfeld (born June 30, 1944) 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. 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. He teaches at Sarah Lawrence College in Yonkers, New York.

Life and work

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

First Pictures (1969-1976)

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. This body of work was first published in 2012 by Steidl publishing house.

American Prospects (1978-1984)

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. 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.

Campagna Romana: The Countryside of Ancient Rome

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.

On This Site: Landscape in Memoriam

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.

Hart Island a Potter's Field in New York City

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).

Stranger Passing

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".

Exhibitions

Awards

Publications

Collections

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