Joel Sternfeld finds his photographic subjects on the street. He produced his first body of work, First Pictures—Happy Anniversary Sweetie Face!, between 1971 and 1976. For this series, he approached people he encountered in streets, public squares, bars, and restaurants with his camera.
 

In creating his work, it has always been of central importance to Joel Sternfeld to pay attention to the effects and meaning of color, that is to work with a specific color palette. His engagement with Josef Albers’s color theory as well as writings by art historian Clark V. Poling, such as Bauhaus Color, were key influences in this regard.

 
With First Pictures, the artist positioned himself within the tradition of American photographers such as Walker Evans and Dorothea Lange, extending their legacy. In the 1930s, these artists had traveled extensively across their homeland, capturing with their cameras the living conditions in the United States. Their focus was on people and their social conditions. Their images continue to shape perceptions of the American nation to this day.

 
Born in New York in 1944, Joel Sternfeld achieved his breakthrough with his series American Prospects, featuring images of people in rural and suburban America. Two Guggenheim Fellowships in 1978 and 1982 supported the realization of this expansive body of work, produced between the late 1970s and the mid-1990s. American Prospects reveals the contradictions, longings, dreams, and traumas of American society—depicting declining suburbs in the Rust Belt as well as majestic landscapes that inform the nation’s spirit. This series has been exhibited internationally in museums and institutions and featured in numerous publications. Images such as the burning house with a firefighter who appears unfazed while buying a pumpkin from a farm stand have become iconic. “You can never know what lies beneath a surface or behind a facade,” Sternfeld observes. He applies this insight to people’s outward appearances but also to observing places and landscapes. As he says, “our understanding is inevitably subject to misinterpretations.”
 

Sternfeld questions the visible and challenges judgments formed at first glance, as exemplified by his series On this Site. For this body of work, he sought out locations where crimes had occurred in the past. So that it is clear to viewers that the photographed location also has a history as a crime scene, Sternfeld adds explanatory texts to the images.

 
Today, Joel Sternfeld is regarded as a pioneer of color photography, alongside Steven Shore and William Eggleston. They all played a decisive role in helping documentary color photography achieve its breakthrough in the mid-1970s. Joel Sternfeld is seen as the most politically engaged of the so-called New Color photographers. With his camera, he documented the G8 summit in Genoa in 2001 and the climate conference in Montreal five years later. Because of his involvement, Sternfeld serves as a role model for many younger artists.

 
Works by the artist are held in major international collections, including the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles; the Art Institute of Chicago; the Museum Folkwang Essen; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Albertina, Vienna; and the Centre Pompidou, Paris, among others.

For further insights into the artist’s work, please explore his seminal photobooks. A selection can be found here.