Rich and Varied History of Landscape Photography Examined

Kansas City, MO.–Photographer Joel Sternfeld will visit The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art this October following the opening of an exhibition featuring his work. American Prospects and Landscape Photography, 1839 to Today, opening Oct. 3, presents 80 works that explore our ever-changing relationship with the natural world. Color photographs from Sternfeld’s influential series American Prospects, a classic record of 1980s America, serve as the focal point for this exhibition, which considers the rich and varied history of landscape photography from the medium’s invention to the present.  

“Joel Sternfeld pictured the American landscape with humor, compassion, and an eye for serendipitous encounters,” said Julián Zugazagoitia, Director & CEO of the Nelson-Atkins. “This exhibition marks the first time that Sternfeld’s photographs, given to the museum as a gift of Peggy and Bill Lyons in 2022, will be on view at the Nelson-Atkins.”

Guests can learn more about the photographs in American Prospects, and the stories behind them, directly from Sternfeld at an Artist Talk Thursday, Oct. 8 at 6 pm in Atkins Auditorium at the Nelson-Atkins.  Tickets are $3 and available on the museum’s website.

Produced between 1978 and 1984 and published in 1987 as American Prospects, Sternfeld’s photographs set a new standard for color photography. Using an 8×10 inch camera, Sternfeld’s photographs balance an appreciation for natural splendor, seasonal change, and wide-open spaces with the evidence of environmental destruction, industrial decline, and suburban encroachment.

“Sternfeld’s unique vision, shaped by an astute understanding of color and his adept use of a large- format camera, conveys the culture and character of this period as a visual chronicle that is at once funny and despairing, compassionate and critical,” said April Watson, Senior Curator, Photography. “His photographs often communicate with a deadpan humor or suggest a tension between the landscape’s enduring natural splendor and evidence of human exploitation.”

The impetus for American Prospects followed specific precedents in the history of photography, notably Walker Evans’s American Photographs (1938) and Robert Frank’s The Americans (1959). Like these earlier endeavors, Sternfeld traveled across the United States with his camera to picture America’s essence at a time of social and political transition. Funded by two Guggenheim Fellowships (in 1978 and 1982), Sternfeld spent eight years driving cross-country in a Volkswagen camper van, using his large-format color negative film sparingly (at times only shooting one or two negatives of each subject). Seen collectively, Sternfeld emphasizes subjects where the ideal of the American Dream and the realities of its failure are brought together. His subjects include coal-laden trains, a water park, suburban developments, factory ruins, a landslide, beached whales, a pumpkin-picking fireman and a renegade elephant, among others.  

Select works by key landscape photographers, past and present, situate Sternfeld’s vision of America in a broader historical context. Included are photographs by Carleton Watkins, William Henry Jackson, Ansel Adams, Edward Weston, Dorothea Lange, Walker Evans, Robert Frank, William Eggleston, Robert Adams, Emmet Gowin, David Maisel, Mitch Epstein, Lauren Greenfield, Victoria Sambunaris, Barbara Bosworth, Will Wilson, and David Taylor, among others.

American Prospects and Landscape Photography, 1839 to Today contextualizes Sternfeld’s achievement through accompanying selections from the museum’s permanent collection, looking both forward and backward in time as a means to consider where, as a nation, our prospects are headed. 

Organized by The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art. Generous support provided by the Hall Family Foundation.