Widely acclaimed when it was published in 1987, Joel Sternfeld’s American Prospects has come to be regarded as one of the important early monuments of color photography. Sternfeld (American, b. 1944) was one of a small cohort of pioneers, including William Eggleston, Helen Levitt, and Stephen Shore, who in the 1960s and 1970s began exploring the potential of color photography as a fine art.

Sternfeld developed a unique aesthetic for the use of color and a distinctive personal vision. Inspired by the photographers Walker Evans and Robert Frank, he embarked on an ambitious quest to document America, traversing the continent from 1978 to 1983 with the support of a Guggenheim Fellowship. American Prospects is the result.

Although Sternfeld saw deep fissures and contradictions in the country at the time, he also went on the road with a sense of optimism and discovery. His goal was not to document the failure of the American Dream, but to record what was great, vital, and regenerative about this nation. On one hand, Sternfeld’s imagery includes damaged landscapes and industry in decline. He delights in the curious, bizarre, and accidental in the everyday. Scenes of an elephant collapsed on the road or a firefighter buying a pumpkin while a fire rages in the background convey a sense of absurdity. And yet underlying the series is a vision of a beautiful land and the eternal cycle of the seasons, and of the variety and resiliency of the American people. Even today, Sternfeld is optimistic about the American prospect: “America has a tremendous capacity to right itself,” he noted recently. Sternfeld’s vision is as complicated as the nation. His images are deep, rich, and powerful specifically because they are complex and conflicted, at once both critical and affectionate.

Guest curated by Robert Wolterstorff, Joel Sternfeld: American Prospects will mount more than forty large scale color prints, among them many of the most iconic images from the series, along with others that have never before been exhibited. It coincides with a new edition of American Prospects published by Steidl Press.

McLean, Virginia, December 1978
Archival Pigment Print
42 x 52 1/2 in.
© Joel Sternfeld

The Space Shuttle Columbia Lands at Kelly Air Force Base
San Antonio, Texas, March 1979
Archival Pigment Print
42 x 52 1/2 in.
© Joel Sternfeld

Abandoned Freighter
Homer, Alaska, July 1984
Archival Pigment Print
50 x 60 in.
© Joel Sternfeld

Canyon Country
California, June 1983
Archival Pigment Print
50 x 60 in.
© Joel Sternfeld