American photographer
Joni Sternbach (born 1953) is an American photographer whose large-format camera images employ early photographic processes, including tintype and collodion. Using an 8×10 Deardorff large format camera, Sternbach focuses on in situ portraits of surfers. Sternbach's photographs are particularly notable for highlighting women surfers and surf culture,[1][2] and for her ethnographic rather than action approach.[3]
Early life
Sternbach was born in the Bronx, New York in 1953. She received her M.A. in photography from the International Center for Photography at NYU in 1987.[4][5] She has also taught photography at New York University and the International Center of Photography and Cooper Union.
Work
In a National Geographic profile, Sternbach describes her relation to using early photographic processes as deploying a medium in need of an appropriate subject matter, one that she gradually found surfers to fulfill quite by accident:[6] "Once I understood the limitations of the process, I realized that it was more of a question of finding a subject matter to suit the medium, not the other way around."[7][8] Indeed, Sternbach is regarded as a master and pioneer of the 20th-21st-century revival of early analog processes.[9][10]
Photographs in Sternbach's 2009 book Surfland are described by The New York Times as "a kind of ethnographic study in stillness, silvery portraits of a tribe united by a sense of adventure, the love of a sport and a connection to the ocean."[11] Sternbach's "16.02.20 #1 Thea+Maxwell" from the series Surfland was awarded second place in the 2016 Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize. Sternbach has been recognized for her work as a female surf photographer.[6]
