McLean, Virginia, Joel Sternfeld, 1978

Joel Sternfeld's work possesses a sense of temporality. His description of the American landscape is simultaneously full of change while remaining attached to tested iconography. The state of contradiction is a commonality throughout many of Sternfeld's projects, speaking on both a conceptual and technical foundation. The transitions in proficiency from landscapes that feel almost deceptively bland and devoid of life, as if acting as a curtain against exploration, to portraits that have an undeniable spontaneity and candidness, lead you to question if Sternfeld is even aware of his own intentions in the creative process or if the meanings of compositions emerge as an afterthought. Certain projects, such as his Rush Hour series, feel more refined and cohesive in the sense of chasing a definable purpose. For the most part, when viewing Sternfeld's work, you get the impression he's defying the principle that the whole is always greater than the sum of its parts. I've grown to appreciate artists who can reach the end of their process in the simplest way possible. I think society at large has developed a harsh negative connotation of 'simplicity' as if something simple can't also be appreciated. It takes a lot of trial and error to refine downwards, and it's often all too easy to overcomplicate a subject to grant it a greater conceptual ambiance, so to speak. Sternfeld's interest in the "lyrical documentary" style of earlier contemporaries such as Walker Evans may have something to do with the way he captures daily life, though much of Evans' work remains in stark contrast, if not much stricter in its adherence to photographing without dramatizing, with Evans' portrait work, in particular, taking on a severity in form. Throughout his journeys across the US between 1978 and 1984, Sternfeld occasionally took an interest in revisiting the same locations, such as the photo below, which has a twin, notably without the fire-stricken house. We don't get the full story in Sternfeld's images of a lonely highway motel or questionably abandoned lumber yard, but that was never the point in documenting a land of contradictions.