Richard Sharum: Spina Americana

Photo-Secession: Painterly Masterworks of Turn-of-the-Century Photography celebrates an intrepid group of photographers, led by preeminent photographer Alfred Stieglitz, who fought to establish photography as fine art, coequal with painting and sculpture at the turn of the 20th century. The Photo-Secession movement took cues from European modernists–who seceded from centuries-old academic traditions–to demonstrate photographic pictures' aesthetic, creative, and skillful value as art. An homage to Stieglitz, Photo-Secession includes some of the very images that established the appreciation of photography's artistic merits. The UMFA will present this exhibition concurrently with Blue Grass, Green Skies: American Impressionism and Realism from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art to draw attention to the cyclical dialogue between painting and photography in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. During this period, photographers manipulated their images at various stages of production to imitate painterly effects, while painters worked and reworked their oils to imitate the immediacy of photography, demonstrating a remarkable reciprocity between these two art forms.

The Center for Photographic Art (CPA) is excited to announce the 2024 International Juried Exhibition with over $5,000 in awards! Forty-five juror-selected photographs will be exhibited from November 23, 2024 through December 29, 2024 in our historic gallery in Carmel, California, and vie for eight cash awards totaling more than $5,000. These photographs will also be featured in an online gallery on the CPA website along with an additional forty-five juror selected images. 2024 IJE Juror: CPA is pleased to announce this year’s International Juried Exhibition juror: Elizabeth Avedon. Elizabeth Avedon is an independent curator, and photography book and exhibition designer. She is a sought after consultant for photographers; editing, sequencing, and advising towards their exhibition, book, and portfolio projects. Former Director of Photo-Eye Gallery, Santa Fe; Creative Director for The Gere Foundation; Art Director for Polo Ralph Lauren national advertising; and Photo Editor for Ralph Lauren Media’s RL Magazine, Elizabeth has received awards and recognition for her curatorial work, exhibition design and publishing projects, including the retrospective exhibition and book "Avedon: 1949-1979" for the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Dallas Museum of Fine Arts, and High Museum, Atlanta; "Avedon: In the American West" for the Amon Carter Museum, Corcoran Gallery, and Art Institute of Chicago. Also from the Leica Gallery, New York; the Menil Collection, Houston, Texas; and for the Estate of Diane Arbus, among others. She is an instructor in the prestigious Masters in Digital Photography program at the School of Visual Arts, New York and proud to have received a “Lifetime Achievement Award” from the Griffin Museum of Photography. Elizabeth brings a deep understanding of photography and a broad appreciation of diverse photographic styles, genres and mediums to CPA's 2024 International Juried Exhibition. Congratulations to the artists chosen for both our gallery and online exhibition!

Berkeley-based photographer Jenny Sampson has spent many years photographing the Bay Area skater community. Skaters have long been seen as rebellious, marked by their fashion, the noise they make rolling down the streets, and their unconventional use of urban spaces. This non-conformist image reflects the depth and determination of skate culture, where skaters fall, rise, and persevere with resilience. Working with the 173-year-old photographic process of wet collodion or tintype, Sampson captures the beauty and spirit of the thoroughly contemporary culture of skating. Creating these intimate portraits requires time, interaction, and collaboration, mirroring the inclusive nature of skater culture. Each portrait reveals a unique honesty, offering a glimpse into the skater or sitter’s true character. Sampson was born and raised in San Francisco. She earned a B.A. in Psychobiology at Pitzer College and has since dedicated her time to her photographic endeavors. She teaches high school darkroom photography, writes and photographs for WithitGirl, is a Rolls and Tubes Collective member, and is the Board President of the East Bay Photo Collective. Daylight Books published her monographs, Skaters and Skater Girls, in 2017 and 2020, respectively. A History of Photography, by Rolls and Tubes, was published in 2021.

As the George Eastman Museum approaches and celebrates its 75th anniversary, we are featuring a group of exhibitions that highlight a wide range of holdings from the museum’s collection. With this selection of objects in the Collection Gallery, we continue our broad survey of works to draw parallels and connections between photography, history, and culture. The objects chosen for this exhibition will chart a course through this history, identifying notable movements and trends while giving context to a breadth of photographic practices, technologies, communities, and traditions. In this exhibition, direct comparisons are made between early photographic print processes, such as the daguerreotypes produced by Southworth & Hawes in the United States and the salted paper prints of Hill & Adamson in Scotland. These objects showcase the resources and technologies that were present at the time of their making, as well as the competing interests that propelled their development in the 19th century. Other pairings in this exhibition examine the development of photographic styles and aesthetics, each a response to specific cultural or artistic trends that emerged throughout the 20th century: Pictorialism, Group f/64, photojournalism and reportage, abstraction and experimentation, and the influence of postmodern practices in contemporary art. The response to these photographic traditions has been varied and complex, and not without critical discourse and debate. These evolutions, however, have increased access to photographic tools and technologies while expanding our understanding of photography and its wider cultural implications. The history of photography has grown to encompass a multitude of voices and diverse perspectives, each of them bringing forth new challenges and provocative assessments of that which came before. This selection includes works by Julia Margaret Cameron, Alfred Stieglitz, László Moholy-Nagy, Dorothea Lange, Gordon Parks, Robert Frank, Imogen Cunningham, Diane Arbus, Andy Warhol, Nan Goldin, and many others. Certain photographs in the exhibition will be alternated over the course of the next year, when the exhibition will coincide with the George Eastman Museum’s 75th Anniversary exhibition in the main galleries. Image: Capitol Police Officer Eugene Goodman stands firm as rioters push toward the Senate chamber during the Jan. 6 siege in the United States Capitol © Ashley Gilbertson

All About Photo presents an exclusive online exhibition featuring the work of the American photographer Ghawam Kouchaki. On view throughout December 2024, this captivating showcase includes twenty street photographs from his acclaimed series ‘Tokyo No- No’ "Tokyo No-No" by Ghawam Kouchaki: A Striking Exploration of Modern Alienation Tokyo No-No examines modern alienation through the family unit in Tokyo, Japan—a phenomenon that transcends cultural boundaries and affects societies worldwide. Everywhere you look, people are struggling to meet expectations that feel increasingly out of reach. When we try to fit into the narrow margins set by others, we often find ourselves profoundly lonely, even among those closest to us. These moments weren’t unique to Tokyo, but something about the city’s relentless energy made them stand out. Hustle culture has infected everything—this constant pressure to capitalize on every second of your time, to never stop moving. I felt it too. I never once thought I should slow down and take in my surroundings. Instead, my mind was always searching for the next photo, always moving, just like the city around me. This isn’t just about Tokyo or America; it’s everywhere. People are told to follow a certain script: work hard, get a stable job, settle down, have kids. But for so many, that script is broken. Economic instability and the rising cost of living have turned milestones like starting a family or owning a home into luxuries most can’t afford. I’ve seen what happens when people try to live up to these expectations. They keep going through the motions, not because they want to, but because it’s all they know. They stay in jobs that drain them, relationships that don’t fulfill them, lives that feel like they belong to someone else. We know it’s not working, but we’re too afraid to try something new. We fall back on tradition, clinging to it because it feels safer than the unknown. Looking closer at the images, there’s a tension that’s hard to ignore—a sense of people teetering on the edge. Whether it’s in the haze of public drunkenness, the defiant stares of commuters heading to work, or the raw, unfiltered emotions spilling out onto the street when someone can no longer keep up appearances, these moments reveal people at their breaking points. These photos capture what happens when we ignore our reality for too long, as people search for release in ways that feel explosive, desperate, or self-destructive. These aren’t isolated incidents but symptoms of a deeper, systemic problem. A great photographer once said that to capture an effective photograph, you need to be a human being first. While I can’t make a direct, one-to-one comparison between my life and the lives of my subjects, their energy reflected my own feelings back at me. That’s what Tokyo No-No is about: creating space for reflection. I hope these photos act as a mirror for some, reaching those who feel trapped by the same pressures. Even for those who can’t quite articulate why they’re dissatisfied, I hope these images inspire a moment of pause—a chance to make small changes toward something better, no matter how insignificant those changes might seem.

M+B is pleased to present Rearview, an exhibition of new works by Matthew Brandt. This is the artist’s seventh solo show with the gallery. The exhibition opens November 23, 2024 and will run through January 4, 2025 with an opening reception on Saturday, November 23 from 6 to 9 pm. Matthew Brandt’s artistic practice bridges historical traditions with contemporary innovation, drawing inspiration from 19th-century American landscape photography while reviving time-honored techniques. Brandt’s unique approach integrates physical elements sourced directly from his subjects—lake water, tree-derived charcoal, and even unconventional materials like tar or cocaine—transforming his works into a dynamic interplay between art and nature. This process imbues his photography with a sense of organic unpredictability, allowing natural forces to shape the outcome and revealing the tension between human control and entropy. His work, whether focused on landscapes or human-made structures, highlights the poetic and tactile qualities of his materials, creating images where the subjects themselves actively contribute to their depiction. Brandt’s latest exhibition focuses on Los Angeles, capturing the city as a realm of stark contrasts, where timeless landscapes meet the relentless sprawl of freeways and smog-filled horizons. Employing a variation of the ancient fresco technique, he translates LA’s iconic freeway systems, palm trees, and saturated sunsets into layered compositions that are as rugged and weathered as the city itself. Each fresco, created with pigment and plaster is formed through a meticulous process. Layers of plaster are applied to a cement board, serving as a base for transferring the pigment from his photographic inkjet prints onto the wet surface. Each layer corresponds to a different image, with the process demanding careful application and adjustment. The material properties of the plaster result in cracks, breaks, and bends, echoing the entropy and impermanence of the city Brandt seeks to depict. Each piece in the series resonates with personal memory, recalling Brandt’s childhood spent gazing out of a car window at the city’s labyrinthine highways. Monumental in scale and spirit, these frescoes underscore the raw physicality of LA’s sprawling structures. The ancient medium of fresco, tied to architecture and endurance, serves as an apt vessel for his exploration of the city’s dual nature—its simultaneous permanence and decay. In Brandt’s hands, the freeways become symbols of both movement and stagnation, encapsulating the allure and despair that define Los Angeles. The weathered textures mimic the passage of time, with cracks and abrasions suggesting the city’s enduring struggle against nature’s forces. Rendered in soft, faded hues, the palm trees and sunsets evoke a poignant nostalgia, tethering the viewer to a shared memory of place. Brandt’s frescoes honor Los Angeles not merely as a physical environment but as an emotional and historical landscape, embedding the city’s complexity into every layer of plaster. His work is a hauntingly tactile tribute to LA, merging history, memory, and material into an enduring dialogue with the city he calls home. Matthew Brandt (b. 1982, Los Angeles, CA) received his BFA from Cooper Union and MFA from UCLA. The artist has been the subject of numerous institutional solo shows, including Light & Matter: The Art of Matthew Brandt at the Forest Lawn Museum, CA; Orphic Forest, Erarta Museum of Contemporary Art, Saint Petersburg, Russia; Rocks and Eagles at the Newark Museum, NJ, Sticky/Dusty/Wet at the Columbus Museum of Art, Columbus OH, which travelled to the Virginia Museum of Contemporary Art, Virginia Beach, VA and SCAD Museum of Art, Savannah, GA. Recent museum group exhibitions include Desert Forest: Life with Joshua Trees, Lancaster Museum of Art and History, Lancaster, CA; Second Nature: Photography in the Age of the Anthropocene at the Nasher Museum of Art, Durham, NC (traveling); Ansel Adams in Our Time, de Young Memorial Museum, San Francisco, CA (traveling); New Territory: Landscape Photography Today at the Denver Art Museum, Denver, CO; The Magic Medium at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA; Light, Paper, Process: Reinventing Photography at the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, CA; Second Chances at the Aspen Art Museum, Aspen, CO; What is a Photograph? at the International Center of Photography, New York, NY; and Land Marks at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY. Brandt recently received the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship Award in the discipline of Photography. His work can be found in the permanent collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC; J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, NY; Brooklyn Museum, New York; Art Gallery of South Wales, Sydney, Australia; Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond; Cincinnati Art Museum; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Royal Danish Library, National Museum of Photography, Copenhagen; Denver Art Museum; High Museum, Atlanta; Detroit Institute of Arts; Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art at Cornell University, Ithaca, NY; and the Columbus Museum of Art, among others. Matthew Brandt lives and works in Los Angeles.

Casemore Gallery is pleased to present "Mercy, Give and Take", a group exhibition that explores the idea of opposition in the photographic works of John Gossage, Raymond Meeks, Awoiska van der Molen, Sean McFarland, and Aspen Mays. The show pairs works from each of the included artists, with each pairing sharing common visual elements—buildings, landscapes, photographic tools—but in markedly juxtaposed states, whether life or death, turmoil or serenity, idyll or menace, pushing up or giving way, or even transposal of space. In doing so, the viewer has the opportunity to look beyond the idea of opposition as having two parts, and ponder all that lies between. John Gossage (b. 1946) Staten Island, New York is an artist who has, more than most contemporary photographers, become noted for his intellectually engaging, subversive and well-crafted artist books and other publications. In them, the artist utilizes under-recognized elements of the urban environment—unused and abandoned patches of land, refuse and detritus, barbed wire, graffiti, and other disruptions—to explore themes as disparate as surveillance, memory and the relationship between architecture and power. Gossage was the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2012. His photographs have been featured in numerous solo and group exhibitions over the past 45 years. His many one-person exhibitions have included The Better Neighborhoods of Greater Washington, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, DC (1976); Photographs of Berlin, Cleveland Museum of Art, (1989); LAMF, Sprengel Museum, Hannover (1990); One Work in 39 Parts, The Saint Louis Museum of Art, (1994); There and Gone, Sprengel Museum, Hannover, (1998); The Romance Industry, Comune di Venezia, Venice (2003); Berlin in the Time of the Wall, Gallerie Zulauf, Freinsheim (2005); The Pond, National Museum of American Art, Washington, DC (2001); and Three Routines, Art Institute of Chicago (2014). Aspen Mays (b. 1980) received her MFA in photography from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2009. Solo exhibitions of her work have been mounted by the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Hyde Park Art Center, Chicago; Light Work, Syracuse; and the Center for Ongoing Projects and Research, Columbus. Mays was recently included in the exhibition Anna Atkins Refracted: Contemporary Works at the New York Public Library (2019). Mays was the recipient of a 2006 Rotary Fellowship and was a 2009 Fulbright Fellow. She lives and works in the San Francisco Bay Area, California, where she is Assistant Professor at California College of the Arts. Raymond Meeks (Ohio, 1963) has been recognized for his books and pictures centered on memory and place, the way in which a landscape can shape an individual and, in the abstract, how a place possesses you in its absence. Raymond Meeks lives and works in the Hudson Valley (New York). He is the sixth laureate of Immersion, a French-American photography commission sponsored by Fondation d’entreprise Hermès. Exhibitions from this commission were presented in New York (ICP September, 2023) and currently in Paris (Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson September, 2024). The Inhabitants, a book made in collaboration with writer George Weld, was published in August 2023 by MACK Awoiska van der Molen (1972) is a Dutch photographer known for her monumental black-and-white analogue images that represent her experience of the primordial and psychological space in the world she photographs. In 2019 van der Molen was shortlisted for the Prix Pictet, the global award in photography and sustainability. In 2017 she was both shortlisted for the Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize and the recipient of the Larry Sultan Photography Award. Van der Molens' work has been shown at Foam Fotografiemuseum, Amsterdam; Huis Marseille, Amsterdam; Kousei-Inn, Kyoto; Les Rencontres d’Arles, France; Pier 24 Photography, San Francisco; Victoria & Albert Museum, London; The Photographers’ Gallery, London; FoMu, Antwerp; and Fotomuseum, Den Haag. Sean McFarland (b. California, 1976) creates work that explores the relationship between photography and the history and representation of landscape, particularly western landscapes and the skies above. With a focus on experimentation, the artist joins aspects of other mediums with photography to uncover the experience of seeing, the passing of time, and the knowledge that we and what we know cannot live forever. McFarland received a MFA from California College of the Arts, Oakland (2004) and a BS from Humboldt State University, Arcata, California (2002). His solo exhibitions include the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA (2017); Visual Studies Workshop, Rochester, New York (2015); San Francisco Camerawork, San Francisco (2009), and White Columns, New York (2004). His work has been included in group exhibitions at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, Berkeley, CA (2018); George Eastman Museum, Rochester (2016); Aperture, New York (2014-15); and Bay Area Now 6, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco (2011). His work is in the permanent collections of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive; National Gallery of Art, Washington DC; George Eastman Museum; and the Milwaukee Art Museum. Francisco, and teaches at San Francisco State University. Image: Raymond Meeks, Halfstory #955 Canajaharie NY 2016, 2019

M+B is pleased to present Bright Sun Sours, an exhibition of new works by Matthew Porter. This is the artist’s seventh solo show with the gallery. The exhibition opens on November 23, 2024 and will run through January 4, 2025 with an opening reception at the gallery on Saturday, November 23 from 6 to 8 pm. Bright Sun Sours is a collection of eight photographs, printed on an adhesive and mounted directly to the wall. The individual pictures are like chapters in a book of essays, connected by their visual style and recurring themes of cinematic romanticism. The medium’s inherent flexibility, along with the incorporation of techniques such as appropriation, digital montage, studio models, and AI tools, allows the artist to add to and manipulate photographs made in the studio or field. The result is less a coherent narrative than a series of glimpses into possible storylines, tempered by the realities of our time, and an underlying mood of concern. A man stands under a tree wearing a thong, a gas can in one hand and a bottle of water in the other. Perhaps he’s consolidating his resources, dressed for life under a blistering sun and a warming climate. The image seems absurd at first glance, yet the reality it posits is a future that’s one-part possible reality, the other a ridiculous post-apocalyptic genre piece. A young woman, wearing a sailor costume, checks her phone before stepping into her car, while her mother loads something into the trunk. Her outfit matches the one worn by Dasha Nekrasova, who first became internet famous for fending off a right-wing commentator by weaponizing the bored affectation of an acerbic teenager. Later, during the pandemic, she became a leading voice in the downtown right-leaning Manhattan cultural scene made famous for its roster of edge-lord artists and writers. Black Moon, Louis Malle’s mostly tedious 1975 fantasy horror film, contains a scene where the protagonist, a young woman frayed from a series of violent and dialectical conflicts, encounters a Unicorn. The brief conversation that ensues in probably the sanest thing that happens in the movie, and it wraps up with the Unicorn wandering off and proclaiming “I won’t be back for another hundred and fifty-four years.” The rest of us are stuck at the chateau for the remainder of the movie. Death Valley is famous for its cracked, parched look—a thick crust of salt baking in the sun, like snow that never melts. But during a recent storm, unprecedented rains flooded the basin with a few inches of water, turning the scorched desert into a placid lake. At sunrise and sunset, the water is still enough to reflect the mountains that surround the valley, mirroring the colors of the desert sky. The rest of it can be summed up quickly: An inverted truck, a tractor without its trailer, looms at the crest of a hill. The image is intended to feel like an 80s movie poster—a possessed piece of machinery that stalks a quiet neighborhood. Crumbling ruins, Greek columns, a tiny model placed next to the real thing. A figure in silhouette stands on a balcony, shielding their eyes from the ozone haze, like an insect fixed in amber. The balcony juts from the upper floor of a skyscraper, the tower modeled on the angular modernism of late 20th century science fiction. Butterflies clustered together for warmth, their wings opening in the dappled, late afternoon sunlight of a California winter. Matthew Porter (b. 1975, State College, PA) received his BA from Bard College and his MFA from Bard-ICP. Recent solo exhibitions include This Is How It Ends, Danzinger Gallery, New York, NY; The Sheen, The Shine, Gallery Xippas, Geneva, Switzerland, and Skyline Vista, M+B, Los Angeles, CA. His work has also been included in the thematic exhibitions Autophoto at the Fondation Cartier, Paris; Matter of Memory: Photography as Object in the Digital Age at the George Eastman Museum, Rochester, NY; Polaroids: The Disappearing at Nathalie Karg Gallery, New York, After Photoshop at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; and Perspectives at the International Center of Photography Museum, New York. Porter's curatorial projects include Soft Target, organized with Phil Chang at M+B, Los Angeles; Seven Summits at Mount Tremper Arts, New York; and The Crystal Chain at Invisible Exports, New York. He is the co-editor of Blind Spot magazine Issue 45 and his writings and interviews have been featured in Triple Canopy, Blind Spot, Artforum and Canteen. The artist’s work is held in the permanent collections of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Cincinnati Art Museum, Ohio; and the UBS Art Collection, New York, among others. Matthew Porter lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.

he work of the Philadelphia-born photographer and activist Harvey Finkle offers an intimate view of the hardships, sacrifices, and joys experienced by members of the diverse communities and political movements he has engaged with over the course of his career. In the Moment explores photography’s ability to interrogate social inequities, arouse empathy, and inspire political action. Consisting of photographs that Finkle has taken over the past half-decade, the show surveys the multiple and sophisticated ways in which his work forges meaningful connections with its audiences. Guest-curated by Antongiulio Sorgini, categorical groupings take us through Finkle's journey, chronicling the stories that shape our collective consciousness.

Native America: In Translation, curated by artist Wendy Red Star, assembles the wide-ranging work of nine Indigenous artists who offer contemporary perspectives on memory, identity, and the history of photography. “I was thinking about young Native artists and what would be inspirational and important for them as a road map,” said Red Star. This road map spans intergenerational image makers representing various Native nations and affiliations, and working in photography, installation, multimedia assemblage, and video. Among them, the late Cree artist Kimowan Metchewais investigates landscape and language through his evocative Polaroids. And the stylish self-portraits of Martine Gutierrez pose as fashion ads and question conceptions of ideal beauty. Together, their work confronts the historic, and often fraught relationship between photography and the representation of Native Americans, while also reimagining what it means to be a citizen in North America today.

Beginning in the early 1980s, Fani-Kayode (1955–1989) developed a photographic practice that refused categorization, cutting across cultural codes, gender norms, and artistic traditions. Born into a prominent Nigerian family, Fani-Kayode emigrated to London in the 1960s, seeking political refuge during civil war. As an art student in the United States, he came to negotiate his outsider status along multiple axes, balancing his family heritage and immigration status alongside his own queer sexuality and exposure to underground subcultures. Channeling these multiple facets of his identity into photography, Fani-Kayode generated a remarkable body of images over the course of a career cut tragically short by his death in 1989. Organized in partnership with Autograph (London), Rotimi Fani-Kayode: Tranquility of Communion is the first North American survey of Fani-Kayode’s work and archives. This major exhibition brings together key series of color and black-and-white photographs along with archival prints and never-before-exhibited works from Fani-Kayode’s student years. Often created in collaboration with his partner Alex Hirst (1951–1992), Fani-Kayode’s photographs treat romantic love with spiritual reverence, translating the emotional intensity of same-sex, multiracial desire into richly evocative symbolic language. Today, his art remains a potent source of inspiration, presciently anticipating contemporary photographic approaches to identity, sexuality, and race.

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.