American Prospects and Landscape Photography, 1839 to Today presents 80 works that explore our ever-changing relationship with the natural world. Color photographs from Joel 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.
Produced between 1978 and 1983 and published in 1987 as American Prospects, Sternfeld’s photographs set a new standard for color photography. Using an 8 x 10 -inch camera, Sternfeld pictured the American landscape with humor, compassion, and an eye for serendipitous encounters. His photographs balance an appreciation for natural splendor, seasonal change, and wide-open spaces with the evidence of environmental destruction, industrial decline, and suburban encroachment.
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, and David Taylor, among others.
This exhibition marks the first time that Sternfeld’s photographs, given to the museum as a gift of Peggy and Bill Lyons, will be on view at the Nelson-Atkins.