Stranger Passing [Hardcover]

Joel Sternfeld (Author), Ian Frazier (Contributor), Doug Nickel (Contributor)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 10, 2001

The long awaited follow-up to Sternfeld's classic American Prospects, STRANGER PASSING is a fresh view of contemporary society that accompanies a major new exhibition at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

With an essay by celebrated novelist and humor writer Ian Frazier and another by Douglas R. Nickel, of San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Stranger Passing is an in-depth look at the art of Joel Sternfeld.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

hotographer Joel Sternfeld turns his exacting eye to American faces, social classes, character types and stereotypes in Stranger Passing. Sternfeld who wowed critics in 1987 with American Prospects devotes a remarkable (and remarkably large) volume to 60 hard-edged, full-color studies of individuals from Manhattan to Malibu, Austin, Texas to Appalachia, in candids and portraits by turns comic, disturbing, angry, pathetic and silly. A surprised lawyer struggles with bundles of laundry; a lumberjack shows off his truck, his logs and his belly button; and "two men on vacation in Bigfoot, Montana" smile through big mustaches at their tiny dog. Journalist Ian Frazier (On the Rez) and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art curator Douglas R. Nickel contribute short essays.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

About the Author

Joel Sternfeld has had numerous group and solo exhibitions worldwide, including at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. He is the recipient of two Guggenheim Fellowships and a Prix de Rome.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 144 pages
• Publisher: Bulfinch; 1st edition (September 10, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0821227521
• ISBN-13: 978-0821227527
• Product Dimensions: 13.9 x 11.7 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #943,838 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Ian Frazier is the author of Great Plains, The Fish's Eye, On the Rez, and Family, as well as Coyote v. Acme and Dating Your Mom, all published by FSG. A frequent contributor to The New Yorker, he lives in Montclair, New Jersey.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Photographic short stories, September 27, 2001

By 

california-bookworm (California) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Stranger Passing (Hardcover)

These sixty portraits of American strangers are rich with an intelligent, questioning beauty. I was dazzled by the exhibit in San Francisco, but now I'm especially glad to have the accompanying book. I rarely find it worthwhile to purchase museum exhibit catalogues, but what I love about "Stranger Passing" is that I can ponder a given image as long as I like, "reading and re-reading" it as I would a really good short story. Indeed, many of these portraits seem as laden with interpretive possibilities as a story by Chekhov or Alice Munro or T. C. Boyle. From a grizzled woman selling papers in the middle of a Colorado boulevard, to a solitary New York banker having dinner, his aloneness matched by a single tulip in front of his little bistro table: I found myself deeply moved by the lavish yet subtle artistry Sternfeld has bestowed on these people and places--each one unique yet somehow familiar--that he encountered in this strange and wonderful country of ours.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars redefining "landscape" photography, August 28, 2001

By 

Boris Aleksandrovsky (San Francisco, CA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Stranger Passing (Hardcover)

Joel Sternfeld travels the roads of America, and takes pictures with his large-format camera. Although all his pictures include people in various situations (attending a party, selling coffee, hanging out in their own homes, vacationing, promenading, relaxing, observing, working), what he is really interested in, is the depiction of landscapes and soft outplay of the mid-afternoon light. There is an overwhelming sense of loneliness. His composition style is superb; his depiction of quality of light reflections of the industrial surfaces is without precedence. In my opinion, Sternfeld really stands on its own. Not since Robert Frank's "The Americans" have I seen such a collection. His compositions are best reminiscent of Philip-Lorca diCorcia's; but somehow people are not the center of attention (and sometimes not even of focus), what is important is the quality of landscapes and how they shape human lives.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Compelling Book Of Photographs By An American Master., March 16, 2005

By 

Jana L. Perskie "ceruleana" (New York, NY USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Stranger Passing (Hardcover)

"American Prospects," a landmark study of how the modern social order is revealed through landscape, published in 1988, brought brilliant photographer Joel Sternfeld to international attention. Sternfeld expanded this study with "A Stranger Passing." The sixty color portraits of ordinary Americans included in this book, and made over a fifteen year period, were first shown at The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in 2001, and published at the same time.

Although Douglas R. Nickel describes this book as a collection of portraits in his introductory essay, Joel Sternfeld's vivid images are so much more than traditional photographic portraiture. The pictures go beyond reflecting a mere image of the subject, no matter how interesting or aesthetic. And Sternfeld's subjects are more than the people being photographed. He has captured here the very essence of our culture - Americans, depicted in the context of their daily lives, during odd moments between events. Many of the warmest images feature relationships between two people.

Each photograph tell a story. The volume's cover portrait is titled "Young Man Gathering Shopping Carts." A teenager, with blond bobbed hair, open shirt, loosened tie, stands in a parking lot cluttered with pink shopping carts. The ubiquitous strip mall is the backdrop. His stance, the look of discontent on his face, and the generic locale say much more than most narratives. Sternfeld stirs the viewers imagination. One cannot help but wonder about the subjects' lives - the before and after of each picture. "A Lawyer with Laundry," New York, portrays a seemingly reluctant subject, laundry in hand, leaning against a newsstand while warily suffering the photographer's attention. Some of my other favorites include: a colorful sari wrapped middle-eastern woman pumping gas in Kansas City; a young woman with bouffant hair, wearing a cotton-candy pink jacket holding her pet rabbit in a plastic carrying case; a forlorn woman on a New York City street holding a spectacular Christmas wreath; a man grilling a single hamburger on a broken patio in Cincinnati; and
"Motorcyclists," which shows a man on a motorcycle, wearing goggles and a leather jacket, with an adorable baby in the sidecar wearing a helmet.

Douglas R. Nickel, who wrote the Introduction, is director of the Center for Creative Photography and associate professor of art history in the College of Fine Arts at the University of Arizona, Tucson. Ian Frazier, who contributed another fine essay is an author.

I don't usually buy coffee table books, although some of them are gorgeous. I have found that while I may admire the work a few times, I wind up placing the volume in a prominant place and then only glance at it occasionally, while dusting. This book is special though. "Stranger Passing" is a "travelogue of sorts, a detached, understated but compelling portrait of the people with whom Sternfeld has come into contact during his itinerant journeys." The photographer compels us to question the assumptions we make about others. This is an extraordinary book by an American master.
JANA