American Prospects

Steidl Verlag
134 pages | 39 x 30.5 cm
Hardback / Clothbound
08/2012
ISBN 978-3-88243-915-1

This is the definitive edition of Joel Sternfeld’s 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.)