# Joel Sternfeld: Nags Head - Hardcover

by **Joel Sternfeld** (Photographer)

**Sternfeld's candid images of an Outer Banks summer, which went on to inform his seminal work _American Prospects_**

In the summer of 1975, facing surgery with the potential of paralysis, a young Joel Sternfeld went off in search of a last idyll--and found it in Nags Head, on North Carolina's Outer Banks. From June to August he captured the beach town floating in time, a sense of spatial and temporal fluidity. Sternfeld's images show beachgoers of all ages enjoying scenes of leisure and partying in what became his first body of work addressing a season.  
Yet this summer sojourn was tragically broken by the news of the death of his brother; Sternfeld returned to New York, never to go back to Nags Head. Eventually he began working again and one day ventured to Rockaway Beach, Queens. Here he took a picture in which "all at once the ugly scene appeared beautiful to me" the hues of sand, apartments and sky fuse into a cohesive whole. This photo, with its conceptual roots in Nags Head, would lead to the color structures of Sternfeld's magnum opus _American Prospects_, his ambitious realization of what he had always wanted to do: follow the seasons across America.  
A major figure in the photography world for nearly five decades, **Joel Sternfeld** was born in New York City in 1944. He has received numerous awards, including two Guggenheim fellowships, a Prix de Rome and the Citibank Photography Award. Sternfeld holds the Nobel Foundation Chair in Art and Cultural History at Sarah Lawrence College.

**Number of Pages:** 96

**Dimensions:** 0.6 x 9.5 x 11.4 IN

**Publication Date:** June 25, 2024

## Details

- **Price:** 55.0 USD
- **Vendor:** Books by splitShops
- **Type:** Books
- **Tags:** Books by splitShops, Shopify Collective

## Variants

| Variant | Price | Available |
|---------|-------|-----------|
| Default Title | 55.00 USD | In stock |

## Images

- Joel Sternfeld: Nags Head - Hardcover

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