Joel Sternfeld

My wife and I were in San Francisco for a few days, and we spent a half-day in the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA). One of the exhibits was a sampling of Joel Sternfeld's photos from his Stranger Passing collection. I was so taken by them that I ordered a copy of Stranger Passing before I returned home. The entire collection grabbed my attention as much as the few I had seen at MOMA. I found myself imagining the lives of the individuals in the collection, their lives leading up to the photo being taken and their lives since the photo. Were their true stories more or less intriguing than the possibilities I found myself considering?… (altro)

This books about the High Line documents the "found park" that existed after freight trains stopped running on the elevated railway and before it was transformed into an expensive and popular park. The carpet of green formed by seeds that blew onto the elevated surface was one of the strongest arguments for keeping the infrastructure and making it a public green space. Joel Sternfeld's photos of the pre-High Line High Line were one of the most important elements in convincing skeptical politicians and landowners to support the efforts of the Friends of the High Line. His photos in the New Yorker in 2001 that were accompanied by the words of Adam Gopnik brought the found beauty to a wider audience, both in New York City and beyond. Those photos and words were made into Walking the High Line in 2001.

A portion of the park's third section (on the west side of Hudson Yards) preserves the wildflowers and other plants that bloomed in the interim, but when that stretch is made up like the rest of the park all that will survive of the in-between years are photographs – and Sternfeld's are easily the best. No wonder Walking the High Line was reprinted in 2009, coinciding with the opening of the High Line's first section.… (altro)

Joel Sternfeld’s Stranger Passing, a collection of sixty photographic portraits, is an art book worth buying. This is high praise for me, since I generally find art books useless. Bought with the best of intentions, they usually wind up unopened and coated with a layer of dust. Besides, they’re over-sized and don’t fit on any of my bookshelves.

To pull off the art book thing you need to have an Architectural Digest type living room with an attractive smoked glass coffee table. It’s not that I might not like a Van Gogh art book, but why get one when I can have a print on a wall where it can truly be appreciated. Heck, I can buy a calendar and marvel at a different masterpiece each month.

Read my full review at the Used Books Blog:
http://usedbooksblog.com/blog/stranger-passing-by-joel-sternfeld/… (altro)