American Prospects Beautiful Color Pictures of Life in America in the 1970s and 1980s

Joel Sternfeld was born in New York City in 1944, and earned a BA in Art from Dartmouth College. Sternfeld began taking photographs in 1970 having studied the colour theory of artists Johannes Itten and Josef Albers. Early work included street photography on small and medium format cameras. 

 

In 1978, Sternfeld embarked on a road-trip which traversed the United States. Using an 8 x 10 inch camera, Sternfeld photographed the communities, culture, landscapes and quotidian life he encountered along the way.

American Prospects is seen as a continuation of the American documentary tradition established in the 1930s by Walker Evans and continued by Robert Frank twenty years later. Sternfeld expanded the trajectory of the medium by photographing scenes rich in implied narrative, which were also distinct in their colour and composition. Laced with a touch of irony, his photographs from the project explore American identity in a thought-provoking yet humorous manner. 

 

His masterful use of colour heightens the tensions in these comic depictions of everyday life in America. First exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art, New York and then published in book form in 1987, American Prospects is regarded as one of the most influential bodies of photographic work from this period. Sternfeld’s later work has continued to experiment with colour and put it to use in documenting everyday events and the people he encounters.