Joel Sternfeld

Sternfeld was born in 1944 and is well known for his large format color photography and documentation of the United States. He was/is also a major player in the color photography realm, helping establish the medium as a respected form of art. Shane brought him up in class last Tuesday and I'm all about what he does, especially in his book/series On This Site in which he documents locations across America where tragedies and acts of violence took place. The most interesting aspect of the series is the fact that the photographs are contextualized by the accompanying side-story--without the Sternfeld's text explaining the significance of each location, they are merely serene rural/suburban photographs. In this way, he has explicitly blurred the line between fine art and documentation, between photography and research, and I dig that. Also interesting is the absence of people in these photographs, despite (or in light of) the fact that their motivation for existing is extremely human.  Below I've included several images from the series with their accompanying text.

4421 Gibson Avenue, St. Louis, Missouri, August 1993



On the night of June 7,1991, nine-year-old Christopher Harris was playing with friends on these steps.
Felton Granger, a crack dealer trying to protect himself from a rival dealer, Marvel Jones, grabbed
Harris and used him as a human shield. In the gunfire that ensued, Harris was shot in the back. Friends
carried him to a relative's home nearby; he died in the emergency room of a local hospital within an
hour. Granger and Jones are serving life sentences for Harris's death.

Gateway National Recreation Area, Rockaway Peninsula, Queens, New York, September 1993



Almost 300 illegal Chinese immigrants struggled against the pounding surf to reach the shore of the
United States on the night of June 6,1993. Ten died of drowning or hypothermia; the rest escaped or
were taken into custody.

The immigrants had endured four and a half months of brutal conditions in transit before their vessel,
the Golden Venture, hit a sandbar 200 yards off this beach. They were crammed into a twenty-by-fortyfoot
hold; food and water were scarce; sanitation conditions were subhuman.

Of those arrested, forty-seven were deported to China, thirty were granted asylum, and forty-six were
released. At the end of 1995,147 were still in federal custody. Lee Peng Fei, the suspected mastermind
of the failed voyage, had demanded $30,000 from each would-be immigrant. He was arrested in
Bangkok in November 1995.

Aisle 2, Row 3, Seat 5, Texas Theatre, 231 West Jefferson Boulevard, Dallas, Texas, November 1993



Lee Harvey Oswald was sitting in this seat when he was arrested by Dallas police at 1:50 P.M., November
22, 1963. The double feature playing that day was Cry of Battle and War Is Hell.

Arthur Watson Hall, 5t Prospect Street, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut, November 1995

David Gelernter, director of computer studies at Yale University and an advocate of the joining of
computer sciences with the humanities, was maimed when a packaged bomb exploded in his fifth floor
office in Watson Hall on June 24, 1993.

Since 1978, at least three people associated with advanced technology have been killed and twenty-three
others injured by bombs sent and placed by a person known as the Unabomber, whose writings express
a hatred of technology and fear of its global effects.

In April 1996, the FBI arrested Theodore Kaczynski at his isolated cabin in the mountains of Montana
with the belief that he was responsible for these crimes.