Joel Sternfeld

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Joel Sternfeld, (b. 1944, New York City), is a color photographer noted for his large-format documentary pictures of the United States. He is been cited as an influence of many contemporary artist after him as bringing color photography into the realm of fine art.^{[citation needed]}

Sternfeld earned a BA from Dartmouth College and teaches photography at Sarah Lawrence College in New York. He began taking color photographs in 1970 after learning the color theory of Johannes Itten and Josef Albers. Color is an important element of his photographs.

American Prospects (1987) is Sternfeld's most known book and explores the irony of human-altered landscapes in the United States. To make the book, Sternfeld photographed ordinary things, including unsuccessful towns and barren-looking landscapes.

Another book, On This Site: Landscape in Memoriam (1997), is about violence in America. Sternfeld photographed sites of recent tragedies. Next to each photograph is text about the events that happened at that location. Sternfeld has also published books about social class and stereotypes in America (Stranger Passing [2001]), an abandoned elevated railway in New York (Walking the High Line [2002]), and a book titled Sweet Earth: Experimental Utopias in America ([2006]). A new book containing close-up portraits of delegates debating global warming at an United Nations conference in Montreal, titled When It Changed, is currently slated for publication in late 2006.

Sternfeld is active in environmental affairs as well, sitting on the board of directors of the Precipice Alliance, a New York City-based climate change arts organizaiton.