Environment - Joel Sternfeld

In this blog post I will be writing about a photographer called Joel Sternfeld. He was born in New York City on the 30th of June, 1944 and is a large-format photographer who is known for his intriguing colour landscapes, especially as he helped establish colour photography as it's own artistic medium. Colour is considered a vital aspect of his photography to him, understandably too. In this first image of his below, you can see that he is sharing derelict train line that has been abandoned for quite some time as the vegetation grows in and around it.

In fact, this railway was built in the early 1930's to lift freight trains off of the street, so as you can guess, this is pretty old. It has been out of use for way over 20 years, and what Joel wanted to express here was it's absolute beauty. What you can see in this image is old rustic buildings in the background, that when compared to the railway, look ugly. The railway starts at the bottom of the photo covering the whole image, but as it continues, it veers to the left, and your eye is drawn upwards to the boring and mundane complex of repetitive windows and brown. This can be seen as a metaphor that explains the almost depressive transition from past into future, where buildings start to take over. 

Similarly, in this picture below, Joel has taken a low-angle shot looking onto the city, at the height of the tallest buildings adjacent to him. This long shot manages to capture a very large area of the city, showing off the population of the buildings. The railway is once again seen in the centre, with the vegetation seen mostly growing all over it. These buildings tower immediately next to the road which insinuates their importance on space. The railway looks out of place, and unwanted by it's surroundings, yet it still keeps the city from looking overpowering and too industrialised. Also, it being in the centre certainly draws in on it's importance as a feature of the city, which can separate it from looking mildly generic.

On this final image of his, you can truly get a sense of realism through looking at the fallen snow, and it differs in terms of how busy the image is, the centre of the railway on the right could most definitely be said to have fallen into the rule of thirds much like the first one. The pale colours are strangely refreshing when looked at in context, the almost slightly desaturated nature of the colours in the other two images produce a different feeling entirely. In the distance though, you start to see the skyline of generic tall buildings reappear - as an indication as to more of what is to come, which pulls at the sense of hope the railway has for it's natural roots. Mind the pun. Overall, the abandonment of the railway's industrial development "cleared the path" for nature to make itself known, giving opportunity to a vegetation that should be preserved, which in turn presents itself as a symbol for what every city should be aware of - letting a part of nature live within it.