PUBLISHER
D.A.P./Distributed Art Publishers

BOOK FORMAT
Clth, 14.5 x 11.75 in. / 140 pgs / 66 color.

PUBLISHING STATUS
Pub Date
Out of print

DISTRIBUTION
D.A.P. Exclusive
Catalog: FALL 2012 p. 6   

PRODUCT DETAILS
ISBN 9781935202974 TRADE
List Price: $50.00 CDN $67.50 GBP £45.00

AVAILABILITY
Not available

Definitive edition of an American photobook classic.

  

D.A.P./DISTRIBUTED ART PUBLISHERS

Joel Sternfeld: American Prospects

Published by D.A.P./Distributed Art Publishers
Text by Kerry Brougher, Andy Grundberg, Anne W. Tucker.

Featured image is reproduced from <I>Joel Sternfeld: American Prospects</I>.First published in 1987, Joel Sternfeld’s American Prospects is the classic photo record of 1980s America. This definitive edition, made with new plates and including one additional photograph, offers a spectacular, funny, sad and soberly riveting portrait of America’s diverse possibilities and prospects in the Reagan era. From the famous “Wet n’ Wild Aquatic Theme Park” in Florida to “The Space Shuttle Columbia Lands at Kelly Air Force Base” in San Antonio, Texas; from melancholy images of beached whales in Oregon to beautiful views of Yellowstone National Park and Bear Lake in Utah; from post-tornado Nebraska to a previously unseen photograph from the series, “Bikini Contest, Fort Lauderdale, FL, March 1983”; the sublime contradictions and tragicomedy of this volume are without doubt one of the greatest accomplishments of color photography, all the more fully realized in this splendid new edition. An essay by Kerry Brougher, Chief Curator at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, considers the historical context of Sternfeld’s book and the pivotal role that American Prospects has played in the evolution of contemporary filmmaking and art photography.
A major exponent of color photography in America, 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’s other books include On This Site (1997), Hart Island (1998), Stranger Passing (2001), Walking the High Line (2002), Sweet Earth (2006), When It Changed (2007), Oxbow Archive (2008) and First Pictures (2011).

Featured image is reproduced from Joel Sternfeld: American Prospects.

PRAISE AND REVIEWS

Aperture Magazine

American Prospects is less a composed sequence than a series of deceptively classical compositions. But many of the pictures contain wild juxtapositions: firefighters extinguish a blaze while one of their number shops nonchalantly for pumpkins matching the flames; a basketball hoop stands sentry in a new suburban dead end; pretty flowers shimmer alongside a sports car in the same wild pink. The idealized semirural life is really a world of uncanny disquiet, perfectly suited to the still and mute image.

Time

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.

New York Times

Dana Jennings

In the late 1970s and early '80s Joel Sternfield criss-crossed the country, from Beverly Hills, Calif., to Aroostook County, Me., capturing Thoreau's lives of quiet desperation whipsawed by the American dream in transition."American Prospects," first issued in 1987, is an essential document in understanding both 20th- and 21st-century America.

Joel Sternfeld: American Prospects

STATUS: Out of print | 00/00/00

For assistance locating a copy, please see our list of recommended out of print specialists

FROM THE ARTBOOK BLOG

CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 8/12/2015

Joel Sternfeld: American Prospects

Joel Sternfeld: American Prospects

"Great Salt Lake, Utah, August 1979" is reproduced from Joel Sternfeld: American Prospects, one of the great American photobooks of the 1980s. Featured in The National Gallery of Art's Photobooks After Frank exhibition, it speaks of "a time when progress lost its sense of inevitability, when the land lost its last pretense to innocence, when the spirit of individualism flickered for want of fresh air," according to essayist Andy Grundberg. The photographs "also speak of nature's restorative powers, of human goodness, of men and women seeking to accommodate their primal needs to the imperatives of technological society. It is a tricky business, balancing these messages, and it does not make for ideological simplicity or political instrumentality. However, in these photographs Sternfeld manages to eke a measure of harmony out of an assortment of follies, which makes American Prospects a metonym for the state of our times." continue to blog


FROM THE BOOK
"If the contamination of paradise has often been Sternfeld’s subject, he has likewise tainted the purity of photography in order to capture the condition of America. His shift from spontaneous snapshot to predetermined picture-making helped open the gates for a new type of photography now practiced by Gregory Crewdson, Rineke Dijkstra, Andreas Gursky, Thomas Ruff, Thomas Struth, and Jeff Wall, among many others. Since the publication of American Prospects, photography has largely displaced painting; energized by increased scale, luminosity, color, detail, and narrative implications, it is arguably the most vital form in contemporary art. By corrupting the purity of photography, Sternfeld played a pivotal role in moving the medium forward."

- Kerry Brougher, excerpted from the essay "Corrupting Photography," reproduced in American Prospects.

JOEL STERNFELD MONOGRAPHS + ARTIST'S BOOKS

Joel Sternfeld: Nags Head

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ISBN: 9783969993187
USD $55.00
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Steidl

ISBN: 9783969992296
USD $50.00
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Pub Date: 12/12/2023
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Joel Sternfeld: Walking the High Line

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Steidl

ISBN: 9783958297647
USD $45.00
| CAN $65

Pub Date: 12/12/2023
Active | In stock


Joel Sternfeld: History in Pictures

JOEL STERNFELD: HISTORY IN PICTURES

Steidl

ISBN: 9783958297609
USD $65.00
| CAN $91

Pub Date: 1/21/2025
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Joel Sternfeld: Our Loss

JOEL STERNFELD: OUR LOSS

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ISBN: 9783958296589
USD $50.00
| CAN $69.95

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Joel Sternfeld: American Prospects

JOEL STERNFELD: AMERICAN PROSPECTS

Steidl

ISBN: 9783958296695
USD $125.00
| CAN $175

Pub Date: 2/11/2020
Out of print | Not available


Joel Sternfeld: Rome after Rome

JOEL STERNFELD: ROME AFTER ROME

Steidl

ISBN: 9783958292635
USD $95.00
| CAN $130

Pub Date: 11/12/2019
Active | In stock


Joel Sternfeld: Oxbow Archive

JOEL STERNFELD: OXBOW ARCHIVE

Steidl

ISBN: 9783958290204
USD $75.00
| CAN $99

Pub Date: 1/21/2025
Forthcoming


Joel Sternfeld: Sweet Earth

JOEL STERNFELD: SWEET EARTH

Steidl

ISBN: 9783958290211
USD $65.00
| CAN $87

Pub Date: 1/21/2025
Forthcoming


Frank Gohlke & Joel Sternfeld: Landscape as Longing

FRANK GOHLKE & JOEL STERNFELD: LANDSCAPE AS LONGING

Steidl

ISBN: 9783958290327
USD $75.00
| CAN $99

Pub Date: 4/25/2017
Active | In stock


Joel Sternfeld: Walking the High Line

JOEL STERNFELD: WALKING THE HIGH LINE

Steidl

ISBN: 9783865219824
USD $30.00
| CAN $40

Pub Date: 9/20/2012
Out of print | Not available


Joel Sternfeld: Stranger Passing

JOEL STERNFELD: STRANGER PASSING

Steidl

ISBN: 9783869304991
USD $75.00
| CAN $99

Pub Date: 8/15/2012
Active | Out of stock


Joel Sternfeld: On This Site

JOEL STERNFELD: ON THIS SITE

Steidl

ISBN: 9783869304342
USD $65.00
| CAN $87

Pub Date: 7/15/2012
Active | In stock


Joel Sternfeld: First Pictures

JOEL STERNFELD: FIRST PICTURES

Steidl

ISBN: 9783869303093
USD $75.00
| CAN $99

Pub Date: 7/7/2011
Active | In stock


Joel Sternfeld: American Prospects

JOEL STERNFELD: AMERICAN PROSPECTS

D.A.P./Distributed Art Publishers

ISBN: 9781935202974
USD $50.00
| CAN $67.5 UK £ 45

Pub Date: 9/30/2012
Out of print | Not available


Joel Sternfeld: iDubai

JOEL STERNFELD: IDUBAI

Steidl Photography International

ISBN: 9783865219169
USD $40.00
| CAN $54

Pub Date: 5/31/2010
Active | In stock


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