1. Wet n' Wild Aquatic Theme Park, Orlando, Florida, September 1980
2. After A Flash Flood, Rancho Mirage, California 1979
3. McLean, Virginia, December 1978
4. The Space Shuttle Columbia Lands at Kelly Air Force Base, San Antonio, Texas, March 1979
Joel Sternfeld is born in 1944 in New York city. he is a fine art color photographer noted for his large format documentary pictures of the United States.
He has influenced a generation of color photographers including Andreas Grusky who borrows many of his techniques. Indeed , for his pictures he used a 8*10 view camera to render detail and the distance also allows Sternfeld to put more information in this pictures.
He write some books , the first is American prospects in 1987 which he explores the irony of human altered landscape in the united states , to make this books he photographed ordinary things , including unsuccessful towns, landscape and people. By the title he might be referring both the America's future with the relationship between the human and industrial, agricultural landscape. We can see , with some example that the work of light and color is an important element of his photographs. Color is for Joel never arbitrary and it's to connect elements and resonate emotions. For him colors add another level of complexity and he always maintains a balance between shade of colors and loaded details. To make this work he choose the time of the day and the quality of light. Many of this photographs are taken in the suburb , rail , road , river way, factories , gas station, motels and old buildings appear in these pictures. It's interesting because all of his photographs have a title , sometimes some text.
The other of this book is On the site, landscape in memorial , which is about the violence in America where is photographed sites of recent tragedies. He studied and photographed also the social class and stereotypes in America.
This primary tools are : distance, color, disjunction and humor !
