Joel Sternfeld was born in the US in 1944, and primarily worked within a classic American setting. He photographed fairly ordinary things, people, and scenes, with an emphasis on the meaning behind the photo which he chose to express through the use of color. Sternfeld tended to use his photography to make social and political commentaries and draw attention to issues such as climate change. Much of the work he did revolved around everyday people and their effect on the world around them.
According to Sternfeld, “this is the surface of the earth and what we do with it tells us an awful lot about ourselves”. I agree with Sternfeld and find the photos that he takes very moving and enlightening, provoking thoughts, questions, and conversations that are important to have in our current political climate. At the same time though, I disagree with one of the claims Sternfeld has made in the past, that “a photograph is a very simple utterance, it may generate a little bit of thought but frankly it’s not capable of complex thought”. I am a firm believer that a photo can be worth a thousand words (at least) and even if the thought it generates, is/isn’t what the photographer intended, it can still be a complex one. This gives good insight though into how he thought and how he took his pictures. He wanted to share one message and one message only.
Sternfeld didn’t want his photos to be vague and over analyzed, but clearly understood. The photo above is a very hectic, yet calm scene which creates a nice juxtaposition from the start. Moving from the foreground to the background, it is a dreary fall evening or morning. The grass is mostly light brown, dead, and flattened with small, insignificant patches of green grass spread throughout. There is a mixture of healthy pumpkins, rotting pumpkins, and smashed pumpkins scattered from the lower right corner of the foreground moving upwards until it reaches the middle-lower region of the photo where there is a sort of shack. The shack is fairly large which the viewer can tell by referencing the figure standing in front of it, holding a pumpkin.
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The shack, which is labeled “McLEAN FARM MARKET” and “Sweet Cider”, casts a shadow over what is directly below it which helps the figure in the fireman’s uniform stand out, with their amber suit which almost matches the color of the pumpkins they are facing. Behind the shack there is a narrow dirt road running horizontally across the photo followed by a few trees which line it. The trees are dark and fairly low to the ground. Looking further back, the viewer can see a house which left side lines up with the right side of the shack, which also sits higher upon the photo so that the base of the house is at the same level as the roof of the shack. The house is a light yellow which almost matches the color of the grass and sign of the farmers market with its green trim.
The roof of the home is on fire with the flames about the height of one of the floors of the two-story home. Above the flames, there is a dark smoke cloud being aggressively pushed to the left side of the photo by wind, blending in slightly with some of the tops of the bare grey trees. On the right of the house a firetruck can be seen with a ladder extended to the top of the home with what could be two firemen inside, but it is hard to tell from the distance the photo was taken at. The entire photo itself has a very nice balance/harmony with all of the colors having the same general sense of depth.
The color of the flames, fireman suit, and pumpkins are similar enough to associate them all together while differentiating them enough for the fireman to stand out from the rest of the pumpkins. The fireman standing in front of the pumpkins could be a photo in itself. We also get just enough information on the right side of the frame to see where this ladder which leads to the roof of the house stems from, while the color of the truck does not distract or take away too much from the scene because it matches the sky fairly well. The trees that make their way off the top of the frame help to tie the entire photo together and help to balance the photo with as much going on at the top of the photo as there is at the bottom.
I would see this photo as being ironic and slightly comical even though I read that he did not intend it to be. Thinking a little deeper into the photograph though and what he typically tried to hint at, I personally got the idea that this fireman could stand for consumerism while the home (perhaps standing for America?) burns behind him. I find this photo successful no matter what the meaning behind it was meant to be because I think people can find many meanings in this photograph. I find this photo very interesting and wish I noticed more of it when I first saw it presented in class. On display, this photograph would definitely be more effective larger rather than smaller.
