STERNFELD, Joel - On This Site

Statement by the photographer, Joel STERNFELD

"I went to Central Park to find the place behind the Metropolitan Museum of Art where Jennifer Levin had been killed. It was bewildering to find a scene so beautiful … to see the same sunlight pour down indifferently on the earth. As I showed the photograph of this site to friends, I realized that I was not alone in thinking of her when walking by the Met. It occurred to me that I held something within: a list of places that I cannot forget because of the tragedies that identify them, and I began to wonder if each of us has such a list. I set out to photograph sites that were marked during my lifetime. Yet, there was something else that drew me to this work. I think of it as the question of knowability. Experience has taught me again and again that you can never know what lies beneath a surface or behind a façade. Our sense of place, our understanding of photographs of the landscape is inevitably limited and fraught with misreading." (© Joel STERNFELD)

Content

The photo volume 'On This Site. Landscape in Memoriam' by prominent US-American photographer Joel STERNFELD contains photos of places associated with tragedy from the perspective of recognizability. The understanding of landscape photography is inevitably limited and full of misinterpretations.

About US-American photographer, Joel STERNFELD (b.1944)

Photo books by as well as with works by Joel STERNFELD