After receiving a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1978 photographer Joel Sternfeld hit the road in a Volkswagen camper van to follow the seasons across the United States. 8 x 10 view camera in tow, he left behind his native Brooklyn and street photography practice in search of something greater still.
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Sternfeld remembers an apocalyptic sense hung in the air, the nation still reeling from the abject failure of the Vietnam War and the utter disgrace of the Nixon Presidency. Desperate for the illusion of normalcy, voters tuned out warnings from then-President Jimmy Carter of a mindless malaise seeping into the nation’s soul, electing a B-list Hollywood actor with an itchy trigger finger to the White House in 1980.
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Over the course of a decade, Sternfeld returned to the road time and again with the support of additional NEA and Guggenheim grants. Working with a large format camera required a new approach; at seven dollars a sheet of film, he immersed himself in the landscape, mentally storyboarding images that distilled the emotional complexity of a nation barreling into the dystopian spectre of late empire.
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