American Prospects

Joel Sternfeld, Anne Tucker, Andy Grundberg, Kerry Brougher — 2003

This is the definitive edition of Joel Sternfelds seminal American Prospects made from new printing plates and technology that did not exist at the time of the 2003 Steidl edition. The book is otherwise unchanged, except for the addition of one new image. The subjects of American Prospects include a fireman picking out a pumpkin at a farm stand while a classic American house burns in the background, a lone basketball hoop in a vast Southwestern desert reminiscent of the Creation, and whales beached in Oregon seemingly symbolic of ecological failure to come. These and other narrative pictures, helped open the gates for a new type of photography now practised by Gregory Crewdson, Rineke Dijkstra, Andreas Gursky, Thomas Ruff, Thomas Struth, and Jeff Wall, among many others By corrupting the purity of photography, Sternfeld played a pivotal role in moving the medium forward. (Kerry Brougher, Chief Curator at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden.) A major figure in the photography world, Joel Sternfeld was born in New York City in 1944. He has received numerous awards including two Guggenheim fellowships, a Prix de Rome and the Citibank Photography Award. Sternfelds books published by Steidl include American Prospects (2003), Sweet Earth (2006), Oxbow Archive (2008), First Pictures (2011) and On This Site (2012).