In 1978 he decided to travel around the United-States. Over a period of nearly eight years, carrying his heavy 20 X 25 cm photographic equipment, he built up his own style of image. Landscapes showing, not without some irony, the relationships between humans and their environment. Some fifty photographs constituting the keystone of his work were published for the fisrt time in 1987 under the title "American Prospects". Strengthened by the heritage of the big names in photography such as Walker Evans, Robert Frank, Lee Friedlander and William Eggleston, the work of Joel Sternfeld could be included in the New Topographies alongside that of Lewis Baltz, Robert Adams or Stephen Shore. Sternfeld composes his pictures with the obsessional meticulousness of a model maker. He plays with color to meet expressive ends which are close to certain picturalos practices. And nature - sometimes totally destructive, sometimes majestic, but always supreme - appears in his work like an unswerving protagonist in spite s efforts to tame it. Joel Sternfeld: Exhausted Renegade Elephant, Woodland, Washington, June 1979
Joel Sternfeld: Exhausted Renegade Elephant, Woodland, Washington, June 1979