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.--Dana Jennings "New York Times"
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.-- "Time"
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.-- "Aperture
Magazine"
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