April 28, 2023 2:44 pm
I am thrilled to announce my next exhibition with Von Lintel Gallery in Santa Monica which opens June 17, 2023.
In addition to exhibiting large format, multi-panel tintypes from the Surfland series I will be premiering my newest film, Making Pictures. Please join us at the opening!
March 24, 2023 1:23 pm
In 2014 I visited Cornwall to photograph surfers. I met some wonderful people and had a fantastic time making wet plates in Newquay. While there I made a portrait of a woman, Lucy and her pup, which I think is one of my best portraits yet. Her dog, Lola held perfectly still for the long exposure. Now, almost ten years later I am having a solo exhibition at Lucy’s gallery, Circle Contemporary. Talk about circles 🌀 If you happen to be visiting Cornwall I hope you can stop by and see the show. It runs from April 1st-May 3rd, 2023.
February 19, 2023 8:14 am
I am delighted to offer this small-scale workshop in my Brooklyn studio in conjunction with Penumbra Foundation on April 22nd and 23rd. photo of me by Jean Karotin
February 17, 2023 11:44 am
Enjoy this interview from “The Conversation,” December 14th, 2017. Hawai‘i Public Radio, HPR-1
November 4, 2022 10:42 am
So thrilled to get this wonderful mention from the NY Times
October 10, 2022 7:34 am
ADAA ART SHOW
Park Avenue Armory
Booth C11
Von Lintel Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
November 3 -6, 2022
September 9, 2022 8:56 am
Friends, I am curating my next exhibition with Analogue Forever Magazine, and I hope you will consider submitting your wet plate images. There is no entry fee.
Prompt: Wet plate photography over the years has typically focused on both portraiture and landscape. For this exhibition, and during this time of global upheaval and national political concerns, my thoughts lead me to how photography can play a role in creating a space for both imagination and escape. Show me work that is tied to the idea of both landscape and escape, made with the wet collodion process.
August 24, 2022 6:03 am
Join David Emitt Adams and me in this rare three-day event in Joshua Tree, CA. working with the wet collodion process. Practicing entirely on location, this workshop offers a unique opportunity to deepen your practice using this historic photographic process. During the workshop we will explore all facets of the wet plate process, working with metal plates and glass negatives, learning ways to refine skills required to maintain a studio practice, and working remotely in the field. Participants in this workshop require previous experience with wet collodion processes and large format cameras. Beginners are welcome but should understand this is not an entry-level course. Only 3 spots remain!
April 7, 2022 6:44 am
My First Curatorial Project: Reimaging Likeness and Landscape opened at Penumbra Foundation on Thursday in NYC. The exhibition features Lisa di Donato, Vivian Galban, Myra Greene, Galina Kurlat, Vanessa Marsh and Lindsey Ross, all artists who work with the wet plate collodion medium in new and unexpected ways. Please click on the link to read the press release. Ambrotype by Myra Greene. The exhibition runs through June 24, 2022. Please contact Penumbra Foundation to book a visit.
April 20, 2022 6:00 am
“What Joni Sternbach Sees In Other Women” by Vince Aletti March 2, 2022. Read Vince’s piece here!
March 27, 2022 7:26 am
Mark your calendars, here it is: my first NFT drop with Quantum.art
85 images of women surfers in celebration of Women’s History Month, on 3/31 at 11am
January 11, 2022 4:19 pm
I am so honored and thrilled to read Brian Arnold‘s beautiful and insightful review of Kissing A Stranger!
You can read it on photoeye’s blog, here
November 23, 2021 8:07 am
Please join me for two upcoming in-person events:
Book signings:
Penumbra Foundation, NYC on December 2nd at 6 PM. I’ll be giving a short presentation and signing books. Reservations are required.
Martriark 133 Main Street Sag Harbor, on December 4th from 2-4pm
October 5, 2021 12:01 pm
Hello friends,
I am so thrilled to announce the launch of my latest book, kissing a stranger, published by Dürer Editions.
Compiled from a decade of black and white photographs, this book tells a very personal story of my early years as a photographer. It is a narrative of my journey with family, friends, and strangers as I navigated my way through the gritty streets of NYC in the 1970s. Its visual language is journal-style, with original captions and poetry. It is infused with the literature and music of its time and offers a glimpse into my development and vision as an artist. Stay tuned for reviews and upcoming book signings.
September 9, 2021 6:37 am
Hello friends far and wide.
I’m thrilled to share the news that I will be exhibiting some of my recent Surfboard photographs at Photo London today, Sept. 9 through Sunday, Sept 12 with Black Box Projects at Somerset House. Click the link for more info.
May 24, 2021 8:20 pm
I am so thrilled to be having this solo show in London with Black Box Projects. The show runs from June 1-10th at 4 Cromwell Place, Gallery 3, London. Please click on the link for more information and to book your visit click here.
March 29, 2021 2:31 pm
UNDEREXPOSED: WOMEN PHOTOGRAPHERS FROM THE COLLECTION
APRIL 17–AUGUST 1, 2021
I am thrilled to be among so many of my favorite photographers in this important exhibition celebrating women artists. Please join me in conversation on Thursday, May 13, 2021 6PM EST, free for museum members.
For nearly all of photography’s one hundred eighty-year history, women have shaped the development of the art form and experimented with every aspect of the medium.
Conceived in conjunction with the centennial of the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment, which granted suffrage for some women, this exhibition showcases more than one hundred photographs from the High’s collection, many of them never before on view, and charts the medium’s history from the dawn of the modern period to the present through the work of women photographers.
Organized roughly chronologically, each section emphasizes a distinct arena in which women contributed and often led the way. Among the artists featured are pioneers of the medium such as Anna Atkins as well as more recent innovators and avid experimenters, including Betty Hahn, Barbara Kasten, and Meghann Riepenhoff. The exhibition also celebrates the achievements of numerous professional photographers, including Berenice Abbott, Margaret Bourke-White, and Marion Post Wolcott, who worked in photojournalism, advertising, and documentary modes and promoted photography as a discipline.
The exhibition also highlights photographers who photograph other women, children, and families, among them Sally Mann, Nan Goldin, and Diane Arbus, and those who interrogate ideals of femininity through self-portraiture. Also on view will be works by contemporary photographers who challenge social constructions of gender, sexuality, and identity, including Zanele Muholi, Sheila Pree Bright, Cindy Sherman, Mickalene Thomas, and Carrie Mae Weems.
This exhibition is organized by the High Museum of Art, Atlanta.
March 20, 2021 4:15 pm
Black Box Projects is delighted to present The Passengers, a virtual exhibition of early work by Joni Sternbach shot on a Leica camera in the New York subway 1975-1980. March 1-31, 2021
February 25, 2021 8:53 am
I’m thrilled to be among such an incredible group of artists in this upcoming exhibition Barbarian Days.
Borrowing from William Finnegan’s Pulitzer Prize-winning memoir, Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life, this unruly exhibition celebrates historic and contemporary artists who consider the ocean as a vehicle for an enriching and daunting personal psychosomatic investigation into creative catharsis. Press release coming soon!
St. Barth
March 9 – May 1, 2021
February 17, 2021 6:58 am
As Much As is a handmade and hand-sewn artist book with words and photographs by me.
This journal-style book weaves the story of a young artist learning her craft and sets it against the backdrop of NYC and its environs in the 1970s.
The book contains 17 tipped-in photographs printed on expired single-weight gelatin silver paper.
50 Copies © 2020
Learn more here
Watch the page-turning video here
December 12, 2020 8:12 am
An unexpected and huge accomplishment for SURFBOARD. Smithsonian Magazine named it one of their ten best books of 2020. Read about it here.
December 3, 2020 5:00 pm
A review of the exhibition Surfboard, by Cole Sweetwood at Von Lintel Gallery
December 2, 2020 10:02 pm
A nice mention from one of the few Photography Magazines still being published in print.
November 25, 2020 12:53 pm
Sit back, relax, and enjoy this musical preview of my latest book. Music by Kevin Faulkner
October 16, 2020 9:44 am
I am very excited to announce my current exhibition, Surfboard at Von Lintel Gallery in Los Angeles. You can read the full press release here.
October 9, 2020 7:12 am
Life is complicated and strange these days. Artists must find many ways to cope, to continue to make work, and to persist in finding ways to exhibit their work. I am pleased to be showing some of my newest projects during this time with two galleries during Photo London. Black Box Projects (London based) is showing work in person at Cromwell Place in conjunction with their opening and the fair. Make an appointment to see it! Von Lintel Gallery is exhibiting experimental photography. Viewing is free and might be just the thing you were looking for today!
October 6, 2020 8:37 am
I am excited to announce that Black Box Gallery has opened at Cromwell Place in London. If you’re out and about and miss the real life experience of viewing art, stop by and see their current exhibition. By appointment only for safety reasons. This in-person exhibition is also viewable on line with Photo London on October 7th, 2020.
August 17, 2020 10:17 pm
A virtual group show of cyanotype photographs with Black Box Projects opens September 9th, 2020.
August 1, 2020 12:30 pm
For all my Southern friends, I am participating in a Summer Surf and Sun group show at the Heart of Gold Gallery in Mt Pleasant, SC.
Stop by for a one on one gallery tour. Please bring your mask.
May 14, 2020 4:36 pm
Over the last month I held a print sale in conjunction with #artistsupportpledge and #photographersupport pledge on Instagram. The response was overwhelmingly positive and I want to thank you all for your support of my work. Stay healthy!
March 16, 2020 1:45 pm
I am super stoked to share this interview with you at Surfer Magazine.
February 25, 2020 7:48 pm
Last September Shannon, from The Process and I met to discuss thoughts on photography, spontaneity, perseverance, and the wet plate process. We also talked about creating emotional landscapes, 1970s NYC photography culture, surf culture (and their similarities), what feminism in art means to me, and my definition of success, the value of making books and finding community + more! Listen here or Spotify.
February 5, 2020 10:48 am
Please join us on Sunday, Feb. 9th from 3 – 5 PM for an open house event with current artist in residence Joni Sternbach.
57275 Canterbury St., Yucca Valley, CA 92284.
A master of traditional photographic techniques, Sternbach has focused her time at YVML on the process of lost wax casting. Photo means light, and glass as a material is able to contain as well as project light. This residency has become an opportunity for Joni to explore the ways glass interacts with photography.
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This event is free and open to the public. Refreshments will be provided.
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November 26, 2019 2:18 pm
Join me and Medium San Diego in this rare opportunity to learn wet plate collodion in the field.
This three-day workshop leads participants through the practical concerns of working with wet collodion negatives and positives in the field. Through two location shoots we will explore all facets of the wet plate process and discuss the pitfalls and unique aspects of working with this popular 19th-century process. In order to maximize your time in the field, some previous experience with large format photography and wet plate is encouraged. May 15-17, 202 Limited to 8 participants.
November 12, 2019 9:50 am
Installation photograph at MOAH Lancaster in the East Gallery. The Momentary Wave is an exhibition of unique tintype photographs made on location in Hawaii. Now on view through January 12, 2020.
October 25, 2019 12:25 pm
Time Lapse: Contemporary Analog Photography celebrates the work of 13 international and national contemporary artists who use the darkroom as a type of laboratory and find inspiration in the vast array of 19th-century photographic processes, from daguerreotypes to photograms. Experimenting with the mutable medium of photography and employing a variety of materials—from cyanotype dresses made of tamale wrappers to a three-dimensional shelter displaying tintype portraits—these artists depict familiar subjects of landscapes, portraiture, and still life through a contemporary lens.
on view at the Shelburne Museum of Art, Shelburne, VT November 9-March 8, 2020
October 23, 2019 9:04 pm
November 9 – January 12, 2020 at MOAH
Please join us for the opening reception November 9, 4-6 pm
September 16, 2019 10:11 am
I hope you can join me and Black Box Projects in London for the opening of the group exhibition, FUNDAMENTALS on October 8th
August 13, 2019 9:03 am
This year I am taking it off the beach to photograph at the annual artist and writers game in East Hampton. Read Michelle Trauring’s article in 27 East.
August 1, 2019 6:35 am
Capturing The Stillness of Surfers in Portraits
from July 20, 2015 by Diane Cardwell
June 22, 2019 9:02 am
I am very excited to be showing new work with Klompching Gallery in their Fresh 2019 Annual Summer Show
Exhibition Dates: July 17–August 10, 2019
Opening Reception: July 18, 6:00–8:00pm
March 25, 2019 10:15 am
Please join me at AIPAD,
where I will be exhibiting recent large-format tintypes with
Galerie Catherine et Andre Hug at booth 905. April 4 – 7, 2019
Opening Preview: April 3, 2019
Pier 94 | New York City
February 7, 2019 2:07 pm
click on image for more info and link
Edition 3/10 available through Paddle8 and Penumbra Foundation. Click here to see more! Auction ends February 21, at 5PM.
February 2, 2019 9:27 pm
I am thrilled to say that two tintypes from the series, The Salt Effect have been acquired by the Joslyn Art Museum. A big thank you to Toby Jurovics for allowing me to bulldoze my way into the exhibition he curated back in 2011: New American Landscape, Contemporary Photographs of the West, and for spearheading this acquisition. The tintypes were shot in Wendover, Utah while an artist in residence at CLUI. For those of you that have been there, you know the terrain and remember the shake of the trailer as the western winds blew just outside your little tin door, right next to the hanger that once housed the Enola Gay.
January 24, 2019 10:17 am
I am so pleased to be selected by curator Sarah Kennel for the winter 2019 exhibition organized by Yorgos Efthymiadis.
January 2, 2019 1:09 pm
I am so stoked to have my recent tintypes from Hawaii be amongst the top surf photos of 2018. Click here to read the full article in Surfer Magazine.
December 24, 2018 2:17 pm
In 1999 I began a single and solitary project on the bluffs above Ditch Plains in Montauk, NY. The project was simple; I brought an 8×10 camera, the longest lens I owned and a reducing back to make close up details of the ocean surface. I later developed and printed these images in both Platinum/Palladium and cyanotype.
This past year I worked with a young artist, Emily Sheffer to bring this project to a different place. It’s now a limited edition artist book in three fascicles, sleeved together with a cyanotype print in each one. This book will later be for sale in my webshop. Feel free to drop me a line if you’d like me to reserve one for you.
November 28, 2018 1:25 pm
Exhibiting with Von Lintel Gallery at Pulse, Miami, Booth N-104 December 6-9, 2018
16.08.18 #1 Present Future, 16×20 Unique Tintype from the series Surfland.
November 17, 2018 3:39 pm
A short and sweet interview by Mike McPhate, from the California Sun.
November 8, 2018 12:27 pm
A nice surprise to see this photograph from The Passengers at the exhibition with the McEvoy Family Foundation.
November 5, 2018 7:50 am
This year’s exhibit, THIS MUST BE THE PLACE, reflects photography’s evolution through time and cultures, transporting viewers from the 19th century to the present day. From Paris to New York and beyond, the exhibit explores commerce and leisure, city and country, nature and architecture, transience and permanence with real and imagined imagery of spectacular venues and abstract places. This year’s selection will include iconic photographs, as well as recent acquisitions.
“Photography’s origins can be traced back to pioneering experiments in 19th-century Paris that harnessed science to create images,” said Dr. Charlotte Eyerman, Director and Chief Curator of the JPMorgan Chase Art Collection. “Considered an ‘industrial art’ until the early 20th century, photography has always been an arena of technical and material evolution.”
October 25, 2018 9:57 am
I am thrilled to be part of this exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery, London UK.
20 October 2018 – 3 November 2019
Room 29, Floor 1
September 20, 2018 1:43 pm
In 2014 I trekked (via airplane) over to the UK to shoot wet plate in Cornwall. It rained the entire first week. That aside, I still had plenty of shooting days. Louise, from Surfgirl magazine, helped me to connect with many of the people I photographed. Here we are 4 years later and one of the loveliest surfers I met has opened an art gallery, Circle Contemporary. I’m thrilled to have my work in this exhibition, COASTLINES! If you are nearby, please stop in and see it!
September 17, 2018 9:55 pm
A lovely opening last night at the Halekulani Gallery and such a delight to have Jack and Kim Johnson stop by to see it
September 15, 2018 3:55 pm
It is so good to be back in Hawaii. If you are here on the island, please join us tonight at Treehouse Hawaii for the magazine release of TRIM Hawaii.
August 5, 2018 9:18 am
The latest issue of Harpers Magazine tells us about wildfires and how the world is burning. It is, but there is a respite in the Readings section. Have a look at one of my tintypes reproduced here for the magazine.
July 21, 2018 3:50 pm
From the land of aloha is a beautiful surf culture magazine, Trim Hawaii. Their latest issue is dedicated to my trip to Hawaii in December 2017, with an accompanying essay by Robert Becker. Pick up your copy here.
July 12, 2018 5:42 am
A group exhibition curated by Tarrah Von Lintel, through August 22, 2018
Dear Friends of Von Lintel Gallery,
I realized the other day that I am celebrating the 25th anniversary of the gallery. My journey has taken me from my home city of Munich, Germany, to New York during the heyday of the first West Chelsea galleries and finally Culver City, CA. Of that time, my four recent years in Los Angeles have been among my most fulfilling and personally happiest in my career.
I am pulling out all the stops with my June 23rd show, “Talk to Me,” an expansive four-room salon hanging of 40+ works from artists with whom I have had associations over the entire run of the gallery. This exhibition will include works by Roger Ackling, Marco Breuer, Sarah Charlesworth, Alan Charlton, John Chiara, Jeronimo Elespe, Adam Fuss, John Newman and David Row and Allyson Strafella to name a few of the artists that are not currently represented by the gallery. (see the complete list at the bottom)
“Talk to Me” is about how these works have talked to me. Of course, I have also known the artists themselves, with their amazing discourses. It is about collectors, too, who have always been a part of the genuine sense of dialogue. (As much as these works “talk to me,” I want to be able to talk with you.)
My plan is to continue the “Talk to Me” salon format into active programming through the summer and into the fall. We introduce this as a willful counter-reaction to current modes of public interaction with contemporary art. Moving away from the nexus of Instagram image-hopping and endless aisles of homogeneous art fairs in destination locales.
I will begin to use the back room of the gallery exclusively as a salon—complete with furniture (collaboratively designed and furnished courtesy of Galerie Carole Decombe). A place where those gathered can slow down and take a look. Returning to a more intimate sense of social conversation around the artworks. In the fall, we will begin hosting smaller groups and organizing discussions around thematic hangings. The mode of engagement privileges social interaction, small club-like evening gatherings around food and drink.
We are looking to encourage the special sense of community I have so appreciated in Los Angeles. The concept is as inclusive as it is exclusive. The audience—“the club” in a traditional sense—should be a self-defining group of people, seeking a next chapter, to see where the next 25 years can take us.
Please join me on the evening of June 23rd for my 25th anniversary “Talk to Me” opening and celebration.
All my best,
Tarrah Von Lintel
July 4, 2018 7:29 am
This past week I visited the photographer, Barbara Bosworth. During the tour of her studio and home, she showed us this very vintage American Flag of her father’s. Of course we needed a picture to memorialize it, and to honor her father.
June 25, 2018 7:03 am
Read Alexxa Gotthardt’s fabulous article from Artsy
May 29, 2018 10:11 am
Summer is here! Check out the Best Summer Photographs by the Guardian
May 26, 2018 6:08 pm
Beyond words..it’s such a thrill, honor and surprise to have my photograph on the cover of SURFER magazine!
May 22, 2018 5:35 am
A nice little shout out from The Eye of Photography! If you are in Paris, don’t miss my exhibition at Galerie Hug.
May 15, 2018 2:59 pm
I am so stoked to have a selection of my work from my recent trip to Hawaii published in Surfer magazine this month. Pick up a print copy my friends, and you can see this feature for yourself!
April 24, 2018 1:02 pm
Here’s a little snippet of my recent show in Paris!
April 2, 2018 2:36 pm
We went to see Sally Mann’s new exhibition at the National Gallery in DC. I truly admire her as an artist. So much of her work speaks to who we are and how we live. Life, death, beauty, illness, nakedness, subjects that she’s not afraid to broach. Both Sally and I have been working with wet plate collodion for a long time. Our work could not look more different really, but then once in awhile, I feel like I may have captured something that she would have turned her lens on.
March 25, 2018 2:58 pm
I’ve been thinking about creating a wall installation in the studio. I have a variety of platinum and cyanotype images already made, but I’ll need a lot of prints for this idea so I’ve been making more.
Stay tuned!
March 22, 2018 11:13 am
The town of East Hampton is considering paving the iconic “Dirt Lot” beach in Montauk. If you are reading this post and would like to contribute to the cause of keeping the dirt lot dirty, please write a few town board members and tell them how you feel.
soverby@ehamptonny.gov
JBragman@ehamptonny.gov
PVanScoyoc@ehamptonny.gov |
March 21, 2018 2:02 pm
Did I mention that there’s a blizzard outside? Kat braved the howling winds of the Gowanus to return some work and chat about photography. Top topics included: a recent trip to Hawaii to photograph surfers, my recent exhibition and talk at the Harn Museum, Fotofest, Sally Mann and bookmaking. For those of you who don’t know Kat she is the Editor-in-Chief of the photography magazine Don’t Take Pictures, as well as the Director of Panopticon Gallery in Boston, Massachusetts. Her writings have appeared in numerous publications, most recently in the book The Artist as Culture Producer: Living and Sustaining a Creative Life (Intellect Books, 2017).
February 17, 2018 3:40 pm
VAST: Sea Salt Sand Sky, is my first survey exhibition. Curated by Carol McCusker, it unifies the last 19 years of my photographing with various materials and media along the shoreline around the globe. It’s a long story that I’ve cajoled and condensed into a 45 minute talk titled: Across The Great Divide, Surfers, Cyanide and Landscape. I hope you can join me on Sunday at 3pm in the Chandler auditorium at the Harn Museum located at the UF Cultural Plaza!
Please contact Von Lintel Gallery for further inquiries about the work
February 9, 2018 11:58 pm
Sunday, February 18, 3 pm
Chandler Auditorium
Artist Joni Sternbach will discuss her creative process and the works on view in the exhibition VAST: Sea Salt Sand Sky. 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 the desert in the American West to iconic surf beaches around the world.
This exhibition is curated by Carol McCusker, PhD, Curator of Photography.
The Harn Museum 3259 Hull Road
Gainesville, Florida 32611-2700
January 23, 2018 12:32 pm
I had the opportunity of visiting HPR while in Hawaii last month. You can listen to my conversation about wet plate photography and surfers here with Chris Vandercook.
December 31, 2017 11:33 am
“Water is nothing if not ingemination,
an encore to the tenacity of life.”
November 27, 2017 8:08 am
A big thank you to Bruce Lipsky, one of the first visitors to see my show, VAST at the Harn Museum of Art.
November 21, 2017 9:00 pm
A very nice piece about my exhibition Vast at the Harn Museum by Noah Lane on Backwa.sh.com.
Backwash is an independent surf anthology brought together by James Bowden, Dan Crockett, Noah Lane, Al Mackinnon, Chris McClean, Matt Smith and Mario Vassiliades. A publication straight from their hearts, raising a flag for the North Atlantic and the North Sea. For every copy sold, they plant one tree.
November 5, 2017 2:53 pm
Upcoming solo exhibition at the Harn Museum of Art
opens November 21- April 24, 2018
VAST: Sea | Salt | Sand | Sky features over seventy photographs by New York artist Joni Sternbach. They picture the sublime vastness of ocean, sky and desert captured on film, and produced as cyanotype, platinum/palladium, gelatin silver or pigment prints and video. VAST also includes 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. “I have pursued historic mediums,” says Sternbach, “as a way to have a conversation with history, and play with photography.”
The word “vast” references the subject and scale of Sternbach’s prints, and the reverie she finds there. Her expansive vistas include history (marking the passage of time and change) and the contemporary sublime (terrifying and awesome in the earth’s beauty and power). Her surfer portraits shift this inward meditation outward to where surfer’s bodies and boards master the ocean’s edge, finding euphoria there.
The exhibition is curated by Carol McCusker, PhD, Curator of Photography.
The artist will give a public lecture in the Harn’s Chandler Auditorium on Sunday, February 18, at 3 p.m.
October 3, 2017 11:01 pm
At Panopticon Gallery by Elin Spring Click here
Read it here on Feature Shoot
September 29, 2017 6:46 am
Photoville has been showcasing photography in Brooklyn for many years now. They include a vast array of artist’s work, photojournalism and lectures…all about photography. Penumbra Foundation has been shooting tintypes there for almost as long. This year I volunteered to shoot with them for a few hours. It’s almost like shooting at the beach in mid summer, minus the bathing/wet suits and surfers.
August 22, 2017 6:51 am
Not being close to the path of totality, I settled for leaf pinhole shadows on bluestone with my Leica.
August 10, 2017 10:43 am
A fanatastic interview (better read in Spanish) with Mercedes Benz Magazine in Uruguay.
July 31, 2017 7:09 am
Upcoming show curated by Jeff Moorfoot at the Pingyao Photo Festival. Exhibition runs September 19-25, 2017.
June 29, 2017 10:46 pm
Some upcoming shows and recent publication with Smithsonian Magazine.
June 22, 2017 9:05 pm
Remembering that beautiful barn that was on North Main Street in East Hampton
June 15, 2017 5:20 am
Stoked to have the cover of the summer issue of Blur. Download it here
May 18, 2017 12:59 pm
Come play with wet plate and me this summer in this 2 day workshop on July 29-30th, 2017.
SOLD OUT
February 10, 2017 2:11 am
It’s true, I’ve always wanted to photograph surfers in a barrel
February 4, 2017 2:02 pm
January 3, 2017 2:35 am
If you are concerned about the upcoming inauguration of Donald Trump please save the date for The Other Inaugural Ball–an art event in protest and a call for community action in Portland, Maine on January 21, 2017.
This event will take place over the weekend of the Presidential Inauguration and will feature poetry readings by award winning poets; a spoken word open mic slam; art exhibitions at3+ galleries; dance performances by Hi Tiger, the Sudo Girls, and the Theater Ensemble of Color; an interactive theater workshops with The Angle Project from NYC; and a keynote address by community activist Fatuma Hussein. We are coming together to support one another and to reimagine a future through greater connection and hope.
All this will culminate in a DJ dance party with 32French at the Maine Charitable Mechanics Hall on Saturday January 21 at 7pm.
We want you there. Save the date for The Other Inaugural Ball.
For updated info please go towww.weareamericanbeauty.org
December 16, 2016 10:58 am
7 days, 7 images on the World Photography Instagram feed
Surfland on the World Photography Organisation Blog
December 13, 2016 10:28 pm
To be whole. To be complete. Wildness reminds us what it means to be human, what we are connected to rather than what we are separate from.”
Terry Tempest Williams
December 12, 2016 10:42 pm
November 20, 2016 9:26 am
Lots of gratitude to all the folks at the National Portrait Gallery in London for the 2nd place award in the Taylor Wessing Portrait competition.
November 11, 2016 7:38 am
“There is a plain unbroken prairie of open sea, lined and rippled with myriad smiling trails of minute undulations, dark and sombrous and profoundly calm, over the dead below — smooth as a tombstone.”
— From Journal of the Photographic Society, February 21, 1857
October 27, 2016 3:30 pm
This is the last week to see Her Wave at Von Lintel Gallery in Los Angeles. Through October 29, 2016
September 28, 2016 5:45 am
Current exhibition at MOCA Jacksonville. Please join me for an artist talk on October 20th at 7PM.
September 12, 2016 10:31 am
So stoked to be on the shortlist for National Portait Gallery’s 2016 Taylor Wessing portrait prize.
August 25, 2016 6:46 am
Her Wave
An exhibition of unique tintype photographs by Joni Sternbach
Opening reception: Saturday, September 10, 6-8PM
2685 S. La Cienega Blvd. Los Angeles, CA 90034
September 10 – October 29, 2016
August 12, 2016 2:46 pm
July 14, 2016 12:48 pm
I am so pleased to be part of this exhibition in Holland which has been extended through August 14th:
ARENA
Noorderlicht Photofestival returns to Museum Belvédère in Heerenveen for the Noorderlicht Photofestival 2016. For ARENA twenty-one artists have been invited from around the world, showing with their respective images a part of the bigger story.
We live in a time when our global culture has subordinated nature. It has become almost impossible to experience unspoilt land, no matter how far we direct our gaze. What remains once humanity and its thirst for action have left the stage, in search of ever greener pastures? With ARENA Noorderlicht casts a forensic look at the traces left behind in the landscape.
The 2016 Noorderlicht Photofestival will take place at Museum Belvédère and outdoor areas in Heerenveen/Oranjewoud. The Museum is situated on the Oranjewoud estate, with splendid gardens and water features and a rich cultural history. NOTE: PART OF ARENA IS EXTENDED – by popular demand – UNTIL 14th AUGUST!!
May 24, 2016 3:26 pm
I m so pleased to be included in this provocative exhibition at the Musée de l’Elysée.
The Memory of the Future. Photographic Dialogues between Past, Present and Future, the Musée de l’Elysée encourages contemporary artists to take a close look at photography as a medium, innovates as it reveals a 3D digitization technology developed by Artmyn, a spin-off from Lausanne’s Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL), and displays its unique visual heritage.
The exhibition opens up a dialogue between the work of the pioneers of photographic techniques (the past), those of contemporary artists that breathe new life into these skills (the present), and avant-garde technologies that update these early processes (the future).
Works from the museum’s collections, contemporary artists and new technologies come face to face and join forces to give a brand new vision of the history of photography.
A book covering the exhibition is also available
Curator
Tatyana Franck, Musée de l’Elysée, assisted by Lydia Dorner and Emilie Delcambre
April 27, 2016 6:48 pm
I’m stoked to have been part of the new film, The Women And The Waves 2, by Heather Hudson. Here’s a fabulous clip of us making the group tintype portrait.
Next Screening in Santa Barbara, California
SURF NITE AT THE NEW VIC THEATRE
WITH A BENEFIT RAFFLE FOR HEAL THE OCEAN
Music* Films* Benefit for Heal the Ocean
Saturday, May 21 * 6pm * Tickets available online:
If you’re in Santa Cruz, CA the film will be screening Saturday, May 7th at Sawyer Land and Sea Supply.
April 7, 2016 1:16 pm
Image: 15.09.13 #6 Elephant Guns, Hossegor, France 8×10 inch Unique Tintype 2015, From the series Surfland
New large format tintypes from the series SURFLAND at AIPAD, Rick Wester Fine Art, Booth 102.
April 14-17, 2016
Park Avenue Armory
643 Park Avenue
New York, NY 10065
Show hours: Thursday-Saturday 11-7 and Sunday 11-6 PM
Installation photo courtesy Harris Fogel
April 2, 2016 9:03 am
It’s an honor to find my work on the walls of another photographer’s home.
Light and Shadow: Photographer Pia Ulin at Home in Brooklyn in Remodelista
March 14, 2016 7:15 pm
March 7, 2016 10:54 am
The Parrish Art Museum in Southampton hosts a PechaKucha only a few times a year. Artists, designers, chefs, gardeners, writers and storytellers all gather together to tell their story with words and pictures in 6 minutes and 40 seconds. Join us on Friday, March 11th from 6-8PM. I’ll be there! For tickets, click here.
February 26, 2016 7:27 pm
Some very nice press for Surf Site Tin Type from Yahoo.
February 4, 2016 12:13 am
Please join me for a couple of upcoming events in the Golden state.
TOMORROW
Saturday, February 27, 2016
Book Party & Signing, 2-4pm
Tower 20, Santa Monica, CA
Just Missed:
Saturday, February 20, 2016,
artist talk and book signing.
Sawyer Land and Sea Supply, Santa Cruz, CA
January 24, 2016 11:31 pm
Not all is as it seems in Joni Sternbach’s affecting 19th century surf photography…
January 8, 2016 5:15 pm
I’m delighted to be in such great company with Elizabeth Avedon’s 2015 photo book round up.
December 15, 2015 10:24 pm
Holiday Magic! “Surf Site Tin Type” (now in its second edition) is featured in Vogue’s Best Photography Books to give, from 2015!
November 24, 2015 3:45 pm
Aloha friends! This year, several of my tintypes will be traveling with Rick Wester Fine Art to Miami for the PULSE contemporary art fair. If you are in Miami, please do stop by! The fair is recognized as a platform for both established and emerging galleries to present their artists to an international audience, and also provides an exciting environment for visitors to discover new work by some of the most compelling contemporary artists today.
This year, the fair will be open to the public from Tuesday, December 1st – Saturday, December 5th. For visitor information and ticket pricing, click here.
My tintypes will be shown in booth N-209, though I do encourage you to really explore all of the fair.
November 19, 2015 11:26 pm
Last week I was in Paris, but before that I flew to Santa Barbara to photograph a group shot for the new Women and The Waves film by Heather Hudson. We came together from points east, west, north and south, meeting at the beach on a beautiful Saturday in November.
This image was made with an 11×14 camera.
November 16, 2015 7:50 pm
This tragedies of this past week’s events put an end to so many lives and our best laid plans. It’s with a heavy heart and great sadness that my visit to this incredibly beautiful city ended so abruptly. Stay strong Paris.
October 28, 2015 6:14 pm
I’m delighted to announce that I will be having a book signing at Paris Photo Grand Palais this year. I will be signing copies of my newest monograph, Surf Site Tin Type, which is now in its second printing. If you happen to be in Paris, please stop by the fair to say hello and pick up your copy. The Grand Palais, a beautiful building in the heart of Paris, is located near the Louvre museum, at the Avenue Winston Churchill.
This year, over 140 galleries from 33 countries will exhibit photographic work spanning time, medium, and location, showcasing the versatility and breadth of photography. Many galleries will have small exhibitions of select photographers’ work, while other foundations will host artist talks and lectures, signings, and photo-book awards. While the fair’s full list of programming certainly is exciting, I hope that you can join me at the Damiani booth EE19 on Saturday, November 14th, at 4PM.
I look forward to seeing you there!
October 25, 2015 4:05 pm
Yesterday I was listening to The Last Cowboy Song on youtube and because there’s no moving images, they presented a slide show where I came across this image. It reminded me of a tintype I shot last year in California. What do you think, was I channeling an age old tradition of cowboy dreams?
August 23, 2015 11:54 pm
Many years ago I bought a handmade book with an antique tintype of a woman embedded into the cover. I intended to turn the book into a photo album of my pictures or maybe even my father’s. However, as I assessed the pictures in my archive and my fathers, I found none that I deemed worthy of this book with a beautiful cover. It remains blank to this day. The tintype on the cover beguiled me with the importance and meaning of a portrait. I did not know when I discovered this book, that I would one day be making tintypes myself.
The art and craft of making wet-plate collodion, tintypes is elaborate and dirty work. The silver nitrate used to sensitize the plates can oxidize on your skin and form a dark brown stain. The process is a finicky one that necessitates patience, experience and a touch of luck to make a good plate. It requires a portable darkbox or tent to sensitize and develop your plates in while on location. Your plates are the same size as the back of your camera, so if you want large plates, you must have a large camera.
The tin is coated with collodion (a mixture of gun cotton, alcohol and ether) and poured by hand on to your plate. It’s then sensitized in a bath of silver nitrate for several minutes. Once that’s done it’s placed into the back of the camera and it’s ready for exposure. Exposure times are guesstimated, and because the process is a wet one, the speed of the medium is very slow. My exposures range from ½ second to minutes, depending on subject matter, lens and light.
The next step is development, which is done in the dark box. Once developed and rinsed, the plate is taken out of the dark box and into the daylight where it’s fixed. This is the moment of excitement and discovery. As the plate is submerged into the fixer bath it transforms right in front of your eyes. It goes from looking like a bluish negative to becoming a positive image on blackened metal…in essence, a tintype.
This dark art, the craft of collodion is like old-fashioned magic. There are potions and elixirs that stain your fingers and have a strong smell. There is a dark box with a cloth of mystery and enchantment. There is a feeling of anticipation and exhilaration as each plate emerges from the fixer. The sense of collaboration is palpable, as my subjects and I both wait for the image to clear, to see if we each held up our end and made a good picture.