American Prospects - Hardcover

Sternfeld, Joel; Brougher, Kerry; Grundberg, Andy

4.62

174 ratings by Goodreads

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 3882439157 ISBN 13: 9783882439151

Publisher: Steidl, 2005

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Originally published in 1987, Joel Sternfeld's now-classic view of America is here remastered, redesigned, and reprinted at a larger, brighter, truer scale. Finally, photography and offset printing techniques have caught up with Sternfeld's eye, and this new edition of American Prospects succeeds in presenting Sternfeld's most seminal work as it has always meant to be shown. A specially-commissioned essay by Kerry Brougher, Chief Curator at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, considers the historical context in which Sternfeld was working and the pivotal role that American Prospects has played in the course of contemporary filmmaking and art photography. In American Prospects, a fireman shops for a pumpkin while a house burns in the background; a group of motorcyclists stop at the side of the road to take in a stunning, placid view of Bear Lake, Utah; the high-tech world headquarters of the Manville Corporation sits in picturesque Colorado, obscured by a defiant boulder; a lone basketball net stands in the desert near Lake Powell in Arizona; and a cookie-cutter suburban housing settlement rests squarely amongst rolling hills in Pendleton, Oregon. Sternfeld's photographic tour of America is a search for the truth of a country not just as it exists in a particular era but as it is in its ever-evolving essence. It is a sad poem, but also a funny and generous one, recognizing endurance, poignant beauty, and determination within its sometimes tense, often ironic juxtapositions of man and nature, technology and ruin. --This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.

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About the Author:

Joel Sternfeld was born in New York City. His work has been extensively published and exhibited, most notably at The Museum of Modern Art in New York and The Art Institute in Chicago, and is included in numerous private and public collections in this count

Andy Grundberg Andy Grundberg has been writing about art and photography since 1974. He is currently the Director of The Friends of Photography in San Francisco.

Review:

Pictures that were once compelling oddities are now linked into an original meditation, on the national life. It clinches the case for Sternfeld as an emerging American master. Time

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