Joel Sternfeld Bücher

This is the first book of Sternfeld’s largely unseen early colour photographs. In 1969 Sternfeld began working with a 35 mm camera and Kodachrome film, and First Pictures contains works from this time until 1980. Here Sternfeld develops traits that appear in his mature work: irony, a politicised view of America, concern for the social condition. But there are also pictures that bear little relation to his later work: colour arrangements that parallel those of Eggleston, as well as street photography which Sternfeld ceased making in 1976. The photographs in First Pictures were made at a time when colour photography was struggling to assert itself against the authoritative black and white tradition, making this book a revelation both in Sternfeld’s oeuvre and in the history of contemporary photography. A major figure in the photography world, Joel Sternfeld was born in New York City in 1944. He has received numerous awards including two Guggenheim fellowships, a Prix de Rome and the Citibank Photography Award. Sternfeld’s books published by Steidl include American Prospects (2003), Sweet Earth (2006) and Oxbow Archive (2008).

This is the definitive edition of Joel Sternfeld’s seminal American Prospects made from new printing plates and technology that did not exist at the time of the 2003 Steidl edition. The book is otherwise unchanged, except for the addition of one new image. The subjects of American Prospects include a fireman picking out a pumpkin at a farm stand while a classic American house burns in the background, a lone basketball hoop in a vast Southwestern desert reminiscent of the Creation, and whales beached in Oregon seemingly symbolic of ecological failure to come. These and other narrative pictures, “helped open the gates for a new type of photography now practised by Gregory Crewdson, Rineke Dijkstra, Andreas Gursky, Thomas Ruff, Thomas Struth, and Jeff Wall, among many others… By corrupting the purity of photography, Sternfeld played a pivotal role in moving the medium forward.” (Kerry Brougher, Chief Curator at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden.) A major figure in the photography world, Joel Sternfeld was born in New York City in 1944. He has received numerous awards including two Guggenheim fellowships, a Prix de Rome and the Citibank Photography Award. Sternfeld’s books published by Steidl include American Prospects (2003), Sweet Earth (2006), Oxbow Archive (2008), First Pictures (2011) and On This Site (2012).

Stephen Shore is renowned for his vibrant, high-key photography that encapsulates the essence of contemporary life. His work has significantly impacted the art world, showcasing a unique perspective and style that resonate with the spirit of the times.

In one of his final acts as mayor of New York City, Rudy Giuliani signed an order allowing the demolition of the High Line, the cherished elevated railroad that meandered down Manhattan's west side. Those who experienced the High Line adored its wildflowers sprouting through old tracks, the seasonal migration of birds, and the unique rural ambiance it offered amidst the urban landscape. However, landowners beneath the High Line coveted the site for high-rise developments, prompting Giuliani's order. In response, the Friends of the High Line, led by Robert Hammond and Joshua David, quickly took legal action to seek an injunction. Joel Sternfeld had already been documenting this hidden gem through every season, capturing its beauty for New Yorkers. In October 2001, as the remnants of the World Trade Center smoldered, Gerhard Steidl accepted Sternfeld's urgent request to create a book. Together, they designed Walking the High Line, which was completed in just seven weeks, ultimately envisioning the successful park that now attracts over two million visitors annually. This new edition includes nine additional photos, a larger format, and an updated timeline, showcasing the book that made the High Line's transformation possible.

The successful photographer shares his idiosyncratic vision of life in America by combining his evocative images with the musings of two great writers.

In 1836, the landscape painter and conservationist Thomas Cole completed "View from Mount Holyoke, Northampton, Massachusetts, after a Thunderstorm (The Oxbow)," his iconic painting of the Connecticut River where it bends like an ox yoke. Nearly 200 years later, Joel Sternfeld walked into the field depicted in the lower right quadrant of Cole's painting--which he had first photographed in 1978 while traveling for his seminal American Prospects series--and began making almost daily photographs. By 2006, the oxbow in the river was crossed by an interstate highway and the destructive effects of progress which Cole had so feared were making themselves apparent globally as climate change. This volume collects 77 of the quietly haunting photographs that Sternfeld made over the next year-and-a-half. His choice of subject matter--a flat, unremarkable corn and potato field--signals a conceptual stance away from previous nature His field is neither beautiful, nor sublime, nor picturesque. Its flatness offers an eloquent emptiness, as well as a vessel for the true subject of this work--the effects of human consumption upon the natural world. Following Sternfeld's Sweet Experimental Utopias in America and When It Changed , this volume resounds with political and cultural implications.

In the early morning of 14 April 2018, David Buckel walked into Prospect Park in New York City and set himself alight. He was a distinguished attorney whose work to secure social justice and LGBT rights had won national acclaim. At the time of his death at the age of 60 Buckel had left the practice of law and was working on a community farm in Red Hook, Brooklyn, as the head of composting. He was married to a man with whom he, and a married lesbian couple, were co-raising a college-bound daughter. In an email sent to the New York Times moments before his death Buckel decried the increasing pollution of the earth. He expressed the hope that his death by fossil fuels would encourage others to be better stewards and cohabitants of the earth. Joel Sternfeld happened to be in Prospect Park on that day with his nine-year-old son. Returning the next day he began to document the gradual regeneration of the site as a means to honor the hope that climate change might be reversed. Our Loss is the latest book by Sternfeld in his ongoing exploration of the effects of climate change, following Oxbow Archive (2008) and When it Changed (2008).

The narrative intertwines Joel Sternfeld's personal journey with the evolution of his color theory over five decades. In 1975, facing a life-changing surgery, he sought solace in Nags Head, North Carolina, capturing dreamlike photographs of beachgoers that marked his first exploration of a season. The tragic loss of his brother cut this period short, but it inspired a pivotal moment at Rockaway Beach, where he discovered beauty in unexpected places. This realization ultimately shaped his acclaimed work, "American Prospects," reflecting his ambition to depict the changing seasons across America.

Present intimations of a disordered future: Joel Sternfeld's photographs of modernity's prospects Joel Sternfeld's History in Picturesoffers a space in which human history and what it means to be human in the world now may be considered. Using unaltered photographs and texts that look behind and around the images, Sternfeld (born 1944) speculates on representative moments and sites to create a portal to what will be on the other side if our course goes unaltered. Sternfeld's pictures often puzzle with notions of Westernization, globalization and identity, such as a young man in rural Peru selling a hot dog on a croissant with evident discomfiture, a girl role-playing as a French maid in a club in Japan, a wax figure of Kim Kardashian at Madame Tussauds and Rocko Gieselman, the first University of Vermont student to register an undefined gender. Modernism, contradiction, inequality, hate, technology, high science and emergent sexual identities have reshaped human existence forever. History in Picturesallows a view back onto ourselves at a time when things are changing so quickly.