Sternfeld’s candid images of an Outer Banks summer, which went on to inform his seminal work American Prospects
In the summer of 1975, facing surgery with the potential of paralysis, a young Joel Sternfeld went off in search of a last idyll—and found it in Nags Head, on North Carolina’s Outer Banks. From June to August he captured the beach town floating in time, a sense of spatial and temporal fluidity. Sternfeld’s images show beachgoers of all ages enjoying scenes of leisure and partying in what became his first body of work addressing a season. Yet this summer sojourn was tragically broken by the news of the death of his brother; Sternfeld returned to New York, never to go back to Nags Head. Eventually he began working again and one day ventured to Rockaway Beach, Queens. Here he took a picture in which “all at once the ugly scene appeared beautiful to me”: the hues of sand, apartments and sky fuse into a cohesive whole. This photo, with its conceptual roots in Nags Head, would lead to the color structures of Sternfeld’s magnum opus American Prospects, his ambitious realization of what he had always wanted to do: follow the seasons across America. A major figure in the photography world for nearly five decades, 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. Sternfeld holds the Nobel Foundation Chair in Art and Cultural History at Sarah Lawrence College.
Featured image is reproduced from 'Joel Sternfeld: Nags Head.'
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Color photography lovers, rejoice! Steidl has released a new photobook from American master, Joel Sternfeld. Collecting photographs taken while Sternfeld was contemplating a major health crisis, they capture Nags Head, on the Outer Banks of North Carolina, in peak, unself-conscious, Summer-of-1975 form. “Delaying surgery,” Sternfeld writes, “I had come to Nags Head, an old beach town floating in time, seeking a sense of temporal and spatial fluidity, a sense of oneirism. After about six weeks of intense work, my idyll was broken by a phone call: my brother Gabriel had died in an automobile accident in Colorado. I returned to New York; I never went back to Nags Head. Two out of my three brothers were now gone.” He grieved and stopped making photographs. Eventually, he found his way to Rockaway Beach in Queens. “And then something happened: a different sense came over me, a heightened color awareness engendered perhaps by all the looking and thought I had given to color. At once, the ugly scene appeared beautiful to me. The hues of the sand and the apartments were the perfect complements to the dusty blue of the sky. Seemingly disparate parts fused into a coherent whole. I made a photograph. Long ago, I had read of a phenomenon which might be described as ‘clear seeing in a clear light.’ Although I cannot now identify the source of this notion, I believe this was such a moment for me. At the time, I had no way of knowing it, but that photograph, made in despair, would eventually shape my entire practice.” continue to blog
FORMAT: Hbk, 12 x 10 in. / 96 pgs / 70 color / 1 b&w. LIST PRICE: U.S. $55.00 LIST PRICE: CANADA $79 ISBN: 9783969993187 PUBLISHER: Steidl AVAILABLE: 6/25/2024 DISTRIBUTION: D.A.P. RETAILER DISC: TRADE PUBLISHING STATUS: Active AVAILABILITY: In stock TERRITORY: NA ONLY
Sternfeld’s candid images of an Outer Banks summer, which went on to inform his seminal work American Prospects
In the summer of 1975, facing surgery with the potential of paralysis, a young Joel Sternfeld went off in search of a last idyll—and found it in Nags Head, on North Carolina’s Outer Banks. From June to August he captured the beach town floating in time, a sense of spatial and temporal fluidity. Sternfeld’s images show beachgoers of all ages enjoying scenes of leisure and partying in what became his first body of work addressing a season.
Yet this summer sojourn was tragically broken by the news of the death of his brother; Sternfeld returned to New York, never to go back to Nags Head. Eventually he began working again and one day ventured to Rockaway Beach, Queens. Here he took a picture in which “all at once the ugly scene appeared beautiful to me”: the hues of sand, apartments and sky fuse into a cohesive whole. This photo, with its conceptual roots in Nags Head, would lead to the color structures of Sternfeld’s magnum opus American Prospects, his ambitious realization of what he had always wanted to do: follow the seasons across America.
A major figure in the photography world for nearly five decades, 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. Sternfeld holds the Nobel Foundation Chair in Art and Cultural History at Sarah Lawrence College.
