“In order to educate man to a new longing, everyday, familiar objects must be shown to him with totally unexpected perspectives and in unexpected situations.”¹ – Alexander Rodchenko (1891-1956).

These words come from an artist who was historically and formally linked with Russian Constructivism, who chose to look at the world differently; to challenge preconceived notions of seeing and reference, at a time in Russia’s history when political, social and architectural changes were taking place.

Joel Sternfeld stems from a long line of committed American documentary photographers who have the capacity to combine social and political issues with a strong compositional aesthetic. At the same time, allowing the viewer to create stories, discover meaning, contemplate questions – or simply enjoy the image.

Sternfeld’s subject matter is People and Landscape and the indelible link that these have in defining humankind. As Diane Arbus once said: “If you scrutinise reality closely enough, if, in some way, you really, really get to it, it becomes fantastic… Something is ironic in the world, and it has to do with the fact that what you intended never comes out as you intend it.”²

Sternfeld’s images resonate with wit, irony and intrigue. They have a lack of sentimentality about them and are imbued with a sense of the tragic, melancholic and introspective. Sternfeld is like a forensic scientist dissecting minutiae but, above all, Sternfeld handles all details democratically. He says: “I think the unity of my work from American Prospects to Genoa, is that I’m working on a set of ideas that have to do with the utopian and dystopian.”

The use of a large 8 x 10″ camera makes the rendering of information clear and precise, with his delicate use of a subtle colour palette enhancing, but never overtaking, the subjects or surroundings. I wondered what motivated him to make a picture?

“I like literature or a narrative. I understand that there is an entirely different approach to taking a photograph, and I like pictures which are taken to see how the world looks photographed, but most photographers have chosen their moments out of an infinite number of moments… There must have been some narrative intention to choose that moment. More and more now, what I believe about photography is that photographers should take more authorship of their work.”

Colour photography was embraced as a serious medium for a small minority of photographic artists in the 1970’s; most readily by a band of American photographers, who were Sternfeld’s contemporaries: Mitch Epstein, Bill Ravanesi, Stephen Shore and William Eggleston were amongst those who acknowledged the new colour aesthetic. These photographers’ historical predecessors were Eugène Atget, Walker Evans, Robert Frank, and Lewis Baltz, who formed the foundation of their development. Whilst these photographers worked almost exclusively in black and white, they shared a commitment to trying to unravel the mysteries of the world. Sternfeld agrees: “Obviously, I had Walker Evans clearly in sight when I set out on American Prospects – I think that there’s no-one working in America to this day who isn’t working under the long shadow of Walker Evans.”

The structural use of colour in Sternfeld’s images makes the work comparable to paintings. Although they do not imitate Painting and have their roots firmly in the Photographic and, to a degree, Cinematic tradition and have been a notable influence on figures such as Andreas Gursky, Massimo Vitali and Jeff Wall. Sternfeld’s use of subliminal narrative play makes the images radiate, and appear to have a sense of wonder. Vittorio de Sica’s film Bicycle Thieves, made in Italy in 1948, is a classic in the Italian Neo-Realist tradition: a simple story of one man’s struggle for employment and self respect. The film is shot in black and white, using genuine locations on the streets of Rome and has an almost documentary feel, with a natural quality and underlying social criticism. Sternfeld’s images (although shot in colour) possess a similar quality of expression in their structural composition and classical harmony – one is immediately drawn in by the sense of scale, density of colour and seemingly arbitrary situations. Their content also has similarities with de Sica’s film: “You have an extreme battle going on all the time between corporate life and artistic life and the corporate consumerist dominance over true artistic freedom. [It is] this epic battle between Good and Evil in America [which is] so interesting.”

On closer examination, the ‘incidents’ which form part of the narrative in Sternfeld’s work start to tell another story – one which would undoubtedly differ from person to person. In American Prospects the images are filled with beauty, heightened by the lushness and spare clarity in his use of colour and formalism. The melancholy is twinned with a budding optimism – a distinct polarity that engages and opens up new possibilities, and an attempt at a stronger understanding of America’s complexity. “I believe in the History of Nations. America has stood for Wealth, Exuberance, Excitement, Exoticism and mobile experiments in Democracy and I think that the point between the melancholic and the exuberant is part of that complex mix which makes America such a fascinating place.”

American Prospects recalls Walker Evans’s series for the Farm Security Administration, but whereas Evans’s images of migrant workers were meant to be an uplifting testimony to the American spirit during the Depression, Sternfeld’s (made nearly fifty years later) showed the discrepancy between the Ideal and the Fact. On the one hand, the images are a sensuous look at the landscape, like a Steinbeck novel – typical Americana filled with romantic longing. On the other hand, they are a pragmatic look at what hasn’t changed since Evans’s time: people are still poor and homeless and tragedy is all around, against a backdrop of unrealised idealism. As Sternfeld states: “I usually have a strong personal nexus to the work, something that I need… I also have a broad idea of what I want to say. The pictures in American Prospects were not random, there was a thesis – I felt that I was looking at a country that was thriving but there was some deeper undercurrent of something very wrong. I never knew that I would come across a scene where there was a beautiful farmhouse on fire and a fireman picking a pumpkin, but it did fit in with my thesis of a place with a vertiginous past. I didn’t know that I would come across condominiums in California with a mudslide and a TransAm, but I knew this broad sense I had. When I set out in 1978, the Vietnam War was still a very fresh memory; Nixon was still a fresh memory. The 1976 bi-centenary of the country was unhappy in the sense that there was a sharp economic downturn in that period… So you had a sense of something being very much amiss in America and a whole New Order arising. And it was this […] that dominated the work.”

Jimo Toyin Salako (JTS): What, or who are your greatest influences?

Joel Sternfield (JS): I have the greatest admiration for Robert Frank. I think that the pictures from the book The Lines of My Hand I put at the top of all art activity for the last quarter of the Twentieth Century. The poetics of this work are enormous, this work is much more important to me than The Americans… Although, it used to be that I couldn’t go to bed at night when I was coming up in Photography without looking at The Americans last thing before I went to bed and I would reach for it as you would reach for a cigarette in the morning.

JTS: Is one’s life comparable to the Art that one makes?

JS: In the end, all works of art are read with a knowledge of the author’s life. You don’t just look at a Picasso without thinking that he had X number of wives. One’s life and one’s politics becomes part of the work. Since that’s the case, why not get out and front with that and state clearly what you mean?

Walter Benjamin said: “…the art of storytelling has become rare […] This is because no event any longer comes to us without already being shot through with explanation. In other words, by now almost nothing that happens benefits storytelling.”³

JTS: Photography in its very nature is fictitious. Only the act of participating is true, or rather, one’s motivation for participating. One has to ask: “What is an honest picture? Do we believe the Media? Can images tell true stories?” Do you think that photographers who set out to show Man’s inhumanity to Man can really make a difference?

JS: I have a slightly complex feeling about the political in the photograph. For the longest time, the political was wrapped up in the notion of the ‘concerned photographer’ and the photograph that meant to ‘do good’. Winogrand and Friedlander reacted against these photographs, and I think that their reaction to the ‘concerned photograph’ was a completely valid one. Anyone that tells you that their photographs are going to change the world is under an illusion. The photographic community is so small, the idea that your photographs are going to help anybody but yourself is not really a valid notion but that doesn’t mean that you abandon the political. The political is the angst that we all live with, and if it works in my pictures, it’s not there because I think that I’m going to help anyone, it’s there because I am worried about it. John Szarkowski once said about my work that it is ‘worried photography’ – but I like that, I’ll take that.

JTS: Would you agree that American Prospects has a sense of ‘wonder’ to it?

JS: There was a very wondrous sense to all that work. I don’t know whether it was because of how young I was, or how young America was, but it was all a wonder.

American Prospects is to be republished by D.A.P/Steidl in August 2003. With thanks to The Photographers’ Gallery, London. Images courtesy Pace / MacGill Gallery, New York.

¹ ‘Rodchenko: Photography 1924 – 1954’, Alexander Lavrentiev (Konemann, 1995)
² Diane Arbus, Aperture publications
³ ‘Illuminations’ Walter Benjamin (1992 reprint, Fontana), 88-89