Untitled, c. 1974
Archival pigment print
Image size: 8½ × 12¾ in.
Sheet size: 13 × 19 in.
Edition of 5 + 2 APs
February 17, 2025
This photograph is a kind of tone poem of color, and offers a fine example of one of the favored subjects of color photography in the period when photographers like Joel Sternfeld were establishing its status as an art form: the play of natural light on manmade color.
In the mid-1970s Sternfeld became interested in using photography to apply the theory of color that Josef Albers articulated in his book Interaction of Color. Albers’ color manual offered the key insight that the perception of one color is significantly influenced by neighboring areas of color, and Sternfeld began to seek out scenes to photograph that demonstrated this effect. In this case the saturated blue of the phonebooks and the yellow of the phone booth interiors are set off against the pale pink and green of the painted houses, the seafoam mint of the 1960s Ford Fairlane, and the airy expanse of blue cloudless sky behind them.
Sternfeld would later note that this exercise didn't yield an overarching theory of color in photography, but it did result in a breakthrough in his own way of seeing. A phrase came back to him, its source unknown, which seemed to characterize the mature photographic style that he was arriving at: "clear seeing in a clear light."
