Joel Sternfeld, First Pictures

Joel Sternfeld, a pioneer in the use of color photography as a fine-art medium, first got on the map with American Prospects, his look at the U.S. during the “malaise” era of Jimmy Carter at the end of the 1970s and the beginning of the 1980s. (Just before Ronald Reagan chased out the welfare queens and restored “morning” in America.) This exhibition looks back at Sternfeld's efforts from the previous decade. Like American Prospects, the images in First Pictures constitute a poetic travelogue, in which the photos serve as sentences in a story about the nation’s spirit during a particular period in history.