Joel Sternfeld
The image says many things to me as a viewer, it has a ‘happy’ feel to it, like it’s a warm summers day around early afternoon.
You have American family’s going for a walk/stroll stopping briefly to take a quick ‘snap’ of the landscape with no pre-visualised idea of what they want their image to be.
The image follows the rule of thirds with the top third the sky, the middle third being the ‘background’ or trees and the bottom being the foreground or the grass and river, its been shot using a high F number to allow more detail to be recorded thus giving the viewers eye to browse the image rather than being directed or controlled by a shallow depth of field.
I don’t think there is much in the way of a political element to the image other than maybe documenting the park.
The image has a visual pathway by way of the dam wall starting from the lower right and curving around the bottom to middle third then off to the right once again on a third.
The thing that draws my eye to the image at first is the Baby in a Cot, the people in the image seem rather preoccupied in looking over the side of the Dam and don’t appear to be concerned or bothered by the Cot, but to me this seems out of place, however I would hazard a guess as to that whoever the child belongs to has been at that location for a while or why else would one bring a Cot out with them.
This is a different side to Sternfeld’s previous images that I had chosen, an I have chosen to deconstruct this because of that, It’s the other side of what you see in the previous two images, there is no human interaction, nobody there only remains of once, what was.
This has emotions of a forgotten time or past, something that once was in daily use but now is left to the elements and for nature to reclaim what once could have been its own.
The image guides you from the foreground to the background by use of the rail lines, almost going into the centre of the image.
The buildings appear to have correct perspective and don’t get smaller on the tops like you would see when looking up from the bottom of a tall building.
A extract I have read in one of my books, ‘The Photo Book’ it says that in Sternfelds images, there is an obvious token of Ambition, be it Nation, Beauty or the Seasons.
The image below I would say was about Beauty because of the place it is and the token I’d say was the Grizzly Bear, which are native to Yosemite National Park.
The image of the Dam I would say that its about Nation due to the workmanship, Man hours and jobs created and also taken during the construction of the Dam.
The last image would have to be Seasons, I can’t see the obvious token but going by the Colour of the overgrown grass/weeds would suggest spring maybe even early summer. Sternfeld has taken many images in the same or similar places during various seasons such as in Winter, where the snow is clearly visible and its obvious as to what the token is.
A Quote:
It’s been very fashionable to focus on the weakness and the banality of America, but what I wanted to say is that it’s also a very exciting and fascinating place.
– Joel Sternfeld, 1987
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