Joel Sternfeld’s Stranger Passing, a collection of sixty photographic portraits, is an art book worth buying. This is high praise for me, since I generally find art books useless. Bought with the best of intentions, they usually wind up unopened and coated with a layer of dust. Besides, they’re over-sized and don’t fit on any of my bookshelves.
To pull off the art book thing you need to have an Architectural Digest type living room with an attractive smoked glass coffee table. It’s not that I might not like a Van Gogh art book, but why get one when I can have a print on a wall where it can truly be appreciated. Heck, I can buy a calendar and marvel at a different masterpiece each month.
Stranger Passing is not the typical art book because you can’t find anything like it in your local mall. I discovered Sternfeld’s work by accident during an Ansel Adams exhibit at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA). I quickly realized that I’d seen too many Adams prints in dorm rooms, hung by co-eds striving for culture, and that while striking, each of his photographs contained the same stark-nature-of-beauty theme. I’m not saying you can’t appreciate every tree in the forest but … I’d had my fill.
Clogged with people and unsatisfied I wandered into a room with huge nearly life size portraits, which upon closer inspection turned out to be photographs! I was immediately drawn to the detailed, quirky, gorgeous images that showcased people and landscapes from all walks of life. One would convey the harsh realities of the homeless while another would poke fun at American excess.
While Adams evoked a mood, Sternfeld provoked thought. Who were the people in these photographs? What were they thinking? What had brought them to that specific time and place? Each of Sternfeld’s photographs tells a rich story.
The cover photo of Stranger Passing is titled ‘Young Man Gathering Shopping Carts’ and portrays a teenager, standing in a parking lot cluttered with pink shopping carts, against the backdrop of an all too familiar generic strip mall. You can feel his repetitive discontent and nearly hear him grumble in a Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure accent as he collects the carts … again.
Some of my favorites in the collection include a young shirtless man standing in front of a colorful demolition derby car, newlyweds posing in a backyard with a flipped over kiddie pool and a colorful sari wrapped middle-eastern woman pumping gas.
You don’t need a guide to help you understand these photos. No pompous, overly academic explanations about brush strokes or f-stops are required. Vivid, accessible and fascinating, Stranger Passing is a sprawling collection that documents the changing American landscape through the experiences of Sternfeld’s subjects.
