Joel Sternfeld, “Exhausted Renegade Elephant, Woodland, Washington, June 1979”; printed 1982. Dye transfer print, 13 9/16 x 17 1/8 inches. Gift of Peggy and William Lyons
Joel Sternfeld’s “American Prospects” and a History of Landscape Photography
A group of onlookers surrounds the body of an elephant slumped in the middle of a rural road. A puddle of water seeps from beneath the collapsed creature, and a sheriff’s car, door ajar, parks several yards away. The unusual scene, shot from an elevated vantage point, looks staged—like a movie still—but in fact it records a real-life event. The pachyderm, named Thai, escaped from a training camp near St. Helens, Washington, after the sudden death of his trainer. Traumatized and tranquilized, Thai is shown awaiting capture after a boy had thrown a bucket of water to cool off the overheated animal.
Remarkable pictures like this one, by renowned photographer Joel Sternfeld, are rare. With an astute eye for color and a keen observational sense, Sternfeld has honed his eye and his knowledge of the medium through years of practice. Exhausted Renegade Elephant, Woodland, Washington, 1979, one of his most iconic images, demonstrates the artist’s unique ability to bring compositional rigor to a serendipitous encounter. The photograph is part of his influential series American Prospects, a body of work produced between 1978 and 1986 on cross country road trips during a period of change and uncertainty in our nation’s history. “All of my work has been about ideas of utopia and dystopia,” he has stated. “I think that’s what gives America interest. It’s many things all at once.”
Sternfeld took this photograph with an 8 x 10-inch view camera, using color film—a format that was still unusual at the time for photographers working outside a commercial context. This larger format demanded a slower, more directed way of looking, and the film cost around $7.00 a piece (approximately $35.00 today). Sternfeld thus had to plan his picture-making carefully. As he noted: “Working at the rate of two negatives a day…I had to be precise in what I wanted to say and what said it best.”
Thanks to a generous gift from Bill and Peggy Lyons, this photograph and 17 other rare, color dye transfer prints from American Prospects will be on view for the first time at the Nelson-Atkins, anchoring an exhibition that examines how American photographers have found inspiration in our landscape since the medium’s invention. Drawing from themes Sternfeld explored over forty years ago—an appreciation for natural splendor and concerns about environmental degradation—American Prospects and Landscape Photography, 1839 to Today prompts us to contemplate how our values, desires, aspirations, and failures have shaped the land we inhabit.
–April M. Watson, Senior Curator, Photography, The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art
Exhibition organized by The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art. Generous support provided by the Hall Family Foundation
