Top Joel Sternfeld Quotes - Quotesmemo.com

Joel Sternfeld Biography

Joel Sternfeld (born June 30, 1944) is a fine-art color photographer noted for his large-format documentary pictures of the United States and helping establish color photography as a respected artistic medium. He has many works in the permanent collections of the MOMA in New York City and the Getty Center in Los Angeles. He has influenced a generation of color photographers, including Andreas Gursky, who borrows many of Sternfeld's techniques and approaches.

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Joel Sternfeld Quotes

No individual photo explains anything. That’s what makes photography such a wonderful and problematic medium.

Explains, Individual, Photo, Photography, Wonderful

When you have unity, I think it squares the reach or power of the work.

Power, Squares, Think, Thinking, Unity

For me it was sort of career suicide to work in color, but I did it because I perceived myself from an early stage to be interested in seasonality - the changing of the seasons - thats what I deeply loved.

Careers, Changing, Color, Seasonality, Sort, Suicide

Photography has always been capable of manipulation.

Capable, Manipulation, Photography

Looking at a black and white photograph, you are already looking at a strange world.

Black, Black And White, Photograph, Strange, World

Photography has always been capable of manipulation. Even more subtle and more invidious is the fact that any time you put a frame to the world, it's an interpretation. I could get my camera and point it at two people and not point it at the homeless third person to the right of the frame, or not include the murder that's going on to the left of the frame. You take 35 degrees out of 360 degrees and call it a photo. There's an infinite number of ways you can do this: photographs have always been authored.

Include, Infinite, Numbers, Photography, Right, Two

Even the photographs of Henri Cartier-Bresson, with all due respect to him, are notoriously burned and dodged.

Burned, Cartier, Henri, Notoriously, Photograph, Respect

Some people consider utopia to be derived from nature. For some people, utopia is the city.

Cities, City, Derived, People, Utopia

I'm trying to take pictures of less and less.

Pictures, Take, Trying

The digital print is becoming the look of our time, and it makes the C-print start to look like a tintype.

Becoming, Digital, Like, Looks, Print, Tintype

Some of the people who are now manipulating photos, such as Andreas Gursky, make the argument - rightly - that the straight photographs of the 1940s and 50s were no such thing. Ansel Adams would slap a red filter on his lens, then spend three days burning and dodging in the dark room, making his prints. That's a manipulation. Even the photographs of Henri Cartier-Bresson, with all due respect to him, are notoriously burned and dodged.

Burning, Dark, Filter, People, Prints, Red

The job of the color photographer is to provide some level of abstraction that can take the image out of the daily.

Color, Daily, Jobs, Levels, Photographer, Provide

No individual photo explains anything. That's what makes photography such a wonderful and problematic medium. It is the photographer's job to get this medium to say what you need it to say. Because photography has a certain verisimilitude, it has gained a currency as truthful - but photographs have always been convincing lies.

Explains, Gained, Jobs, Lying, Photo, Photography