Joni Sternbach, Montauk Bluffs, Ocean Photo Vintage Beach Photograph Platinum Palladium Print, 2000

This is a Platinum Palladium print from one of her first ocean-based beach series, a body of platinum/palladium prints that focused on the water’s surface. Later, she transferred her attention to architectural remnants of human habitation near the shore, but people didn’t begin appearing in her work until she came across a group of swimmers at a surf break in 2006. Ever since, she has used her old-fashioned camera to capture the “interconnection between humans, one to each other, and the natural world.”

Joni Sternbach, a native New Yorker, holds a BFA in Photography from the School of Visual Arts and an MA from New York University/International Center of Photography. She uses both large-format film and early photographic processes to create contemporary landscapes and environmental portraits. Her work centers on our relationship with water, contrasting some of the most desolate deserts in the American West to iconic ocean surf beaches around the world. For the tintype series Surfland, Sternbach has traveled around the globe to capture surfers’ sense of adventure, love of the sport, and connection to the ocean.
Sternbach uses both large format film and early photographic processes (tintype, cyanotype, collotype, ambrotype, gelatin silver prints and pigment prints, sepia, video etc.) to create contemporary landscapes and environmental portraits. Her work centers on our relationship with water, contrasting some of the most desolate deserts in the American West to iconic surf beaches around the world.
Her work is included in many public collections, with recent acquisitions from the Joslyn Art Museum, Harn Museum, MOCA, Jacksonville and National Portrait Gallery in London. She is the recipient of several grants and prizes including the Clarence John Laughlin award, NYFA and 2nd prize winner in the Taylor Wessing Portrait Prize competition 2016.
Her monograph, Surf Site Tin Type was published by Damiani Editore in March 2015. Sternbach’s most celebrated series, Surfland, a mesmerizing array of surfer portraits (some of noted surfers) made on beaches around the world in the 19th century wet plate collodion process. Applying almost every photographic form there is, the artist uses a variety of matrices (glass, film, video), camera sizes (the largest, a 16×20” view camera) and lenses (including a 1840s Petzval Portrait lens) to create exquisitely detailed imagery.

She is represented by:
Von Lintel Gallery in Los Angeles, California
Galerie Catherine et Andre Hug in Paris, France
Arc Fine Art LLC in East Hampton, NY

SELECTED ONE PERSON EXHIBITIONS
2018 Halekulani Hotel, Honolulu, HI It Comes In Waves
Galerie Hug, Paris, France Le Long de L’ocean
2017 The Harn Museum, Gainesville, FL VAST: Sea-Salt-Sand-Sky
2016 Von Lintel Gallery, Los Angeles, CA Her Wave
2015 Rick Wester Fine Art, New York Selections from Surf Site Tin Type
Southeast Museum of Photography, Daytona Beach, FL Surfland
2011 Joseph Bellows Gallery, La Jolla, CA
2010 Kenise Barnes Fine Art, Larchmont, NY
2009 Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, MA Surfland
Blue Sky Gallery, Portland, OR Surfland
New York Photo Festival, curated by William Ewing, Brooklyn, NY
String Room Gallery, Wells College, Aurora, NY Surfland
2007 Edward Cella Art + Architecture, Santa Barbara, CA
2006 Kenise Barnes Fine Art, Larchmont, NY
1992 Julie Saul Gallery, NYC Untitled Silhouettes

SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2018 Photography – A Living Art, National Portrait Gallery, London
Coastlines, Circle Contemporary. Wadebridge, Cornwall, UK
Coast to Coast, L. Parker Stephenson Gallery, NYC
2017 At Sea, Panopticon Gallery, Boston, MA
Old School/New School, Pingyao International Photo Festival, Pingyao, China
Women in Surfing: Art & History, Huntington Beach Art Center, Huntington
Beach, CA
2016 Retro-spective: Analog Photography in a Digital World, MOCA, Jacksonville
Unbound V, Candela Gallery and Books
Memory of the Future, Musée de l’Elysée, Lausanne, Switzerland
AIPAD Photography Fair, New York
2015 New Visionaries: Photographers Who Bridge Art + Commerce, Mount Ida
College, Newton, MA
AIPAD Photography Fair, New York
2014 Not Long Hidden, Rick Wester Fine Art, New York
2013 Drawn To Water, United Photo Industries, Brooklyn, NY
Looking At The New West, The Fralin Museum of Art, Charlottesville, VA
About Face: Contemporary Portraiture, The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art,
Kansas City, MO
Sometime Other Than Now: Alternative Processes in Contemporary
Photography, The Light Factory, Charlottesville, NC
2012 Portrayal/Betrayal, Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Santa Barbara, CA
Unbound, Candela Gallery, Richmond, VA
surFACE: Contemporary Wet Plate Collodion Portraiture, Photo Center NW,
Seattle, WA
Wave Rave, Space 15 Twenty, Los Angeles, CA
2011 American Landscape: Contemporary Photographs of the West, Joslyn Art
Museum, Omaha, NE
Wet Plate and Mirrors: Photographers working with historical processes, Jennifer
Schwartz Gallery, Atlanta, GA
Splash: Celebrating Ventura County Beach, Museum of Ventura County,
Ventura, CA
L’Objet Photographique, Maison Européenne de la Photographie, Paris, France
Water Water Every Where, BRIC Arts Media, Brooklyn, NY
2010 Aperture Benefit Auction, Aperture, New York
NYC SP Arte, Gallery 1500, Sao Paulo, Brazil
Stoked on Summer, Space 15 Twenty Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
2009 Stoked on Summer, Bonni Benrubi Gallery, New York
Summer’s Almost Gone, Scheinbaum Russek Gallery, Santa Fe, NM
We’re All Gonna Die, Sue Scott Gallery, New York
Transforming Photography, Edward Cella Art+Architecture, Los Angeles, CA
2008 Into The Ether, RAYKO Gallery, San Francisco, CA
Artware editions at the VIP lounge, Pulse Art Fair, New York
Resurrection, 23 Sandy Gallery, Portland, OR
2007 Glass Love: Contemporary Art and Surf, Santa Barbara Contemporary Arts
Forum, Santa Barbara, CA
Spectra ’07 Best in Show, Silvermine Arts Guild, New Canaan, CT
By Invitation Only, Kinz, Tillou + Feigen, New York
Welcome to Our Neighborhood, Edward Cella Art + Architecture. Santa Barbara,
CA
2006 Wallpaper Lab, Lennon, Weinberg Gallery, New York
Nostalgic Noir, Chicago Art Source, Chicago, IL
Recent Landscape Photography: The Intimate and the Sublime St Louis Art
Museum, St Louis, MO
2005 Inaugural Exhibition, Jenkins Johnson Gallery, New York
When We Were Young, Foley Gallery, New York
OnLine/OnSite, Photo Eye Gallery, Santa Fe, NM
2004 Permutations on the Picturesque, Senior and Shopmaker Gallery, New York
Where the Island Begins, Hofstra University, Hempstead, NY
Images of Time and Place: Contemporary Views of Landscape, Lehman College
Art Gallery, Bronx, NY
2002 Body Language, Islip Art Museum, Islip, NY
Permeable Borders, Akus Gallery, Eastern Connecticut State University,
Willimantic, CT
1996 Circumstances Over Design, Robert Menschel Gallery, Syracuse, NY
1994 Hidden Faces, Paul Kopeikin Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
Little Things, Art In General, New York
1993 A Second Look: Women Photographers at the HRHRC, UT Austin, Austin, TX
1991 Pleasures And Terrors of Domestic Comfort, Museum Of Modern Art, New York
GRANTS, RESIDENCIES & PRIZES
2018 MacDowell Colony Artist in Residence
2016 Taylor Wessing Portrait prize, NPG London. 2nd place
2012 Ucross Foundation Artist In Residence
Kimmel Harding Nelson Artist In Residence
2011 Clarence John Laughlin award
Art Park/Atlantic Artist In Residence Byron Bay, AU
2010 Santo Foundation Individual Artist Grant
2007 Critical Mass Hardbound Monograph Winner published 2009
2007 Center For Land Use Interpretation. Wendover, Utah Artist In Residence
1987 Light Work. Syracuse, NY Artist In Residence
1986 New York Foundation For The Arts
1982 Creative Artists Public Service
BIBLIOGRAPHY
2017 Borrowed Light By Ian Berry from the Jack Shear collection
2016 Surfing by Jim Heimann published by Taschen
2015 Surf Site Tin Type, published by Damiani Editore
2014 The Passengers, published by Café Royal Books
2013 Promise Land, published by Café Royal Books
2011 The Photograph Not Taken by Will Steacy
2010 Face to Face: Ocean Portraits by Huw Lewis-Jones
2009 SurfLand, published by Photolucida
1991 Pleasures and Terrors of Domestic Comfort by Peter Galassi – published by MOMA
COLLECTIONS
Harn Museum of Art
Tang Teaching Museum, Saratoga Springs, NY
MOCA, Jacksonville, FL
National Portrait Gallery, London
Peabody Essex Museum
Victoria and Albert Museum National Art Library
Tate Museum of Art Library Collection
J.P. Morgan Chase
The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art
Maison Européenne de la Photographie. Paris, France
Museum of Photographic Arts. San Diego
Santa Barbara Museum of Art
Museum of Fine Arts, Houston
Smithsonian National Museum of American History
The Cleveland Museum of Art
St. Louis Art Museum
University Of Texas At Austin. Harry Ransom Center
Bibliotheque Nationale. Paris, France
International Center of Photography
Center For Photography. Woodstock, NY
Light Work. Syracuse, NY
Polaroid International Collection
TEACHING
Penumbra Foundation, Center for Alternative Photography, New York 2003-present
Visiting Artist, The Cooper Union, New York 2014-2017
International Center of Photography, New York 2003-2012
Utah State University, Logan, Utah 2012
Houston Center for Photography, Houston, TX 2011
Luz Gallery and Workshops, BC 2011, 2013
Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, MA 2009
Silver Eye Center for Photography, Pittsburgh, PA 2004
Adjunct Instructor in Art, New York University, New York 1986-2007
FILMS
Surfing In Other Languages (2017) 3 minutes
Momenta 2009 7 minutes
Still tintype portraits of surfers in films:
The Women and the Waves: 2 by Heather Hudson (2016)
The Women and the Waves by Heather Hudson and Peck Ewer (2009)